


Let's See What Teeth Can Do

by AwCoffeeNo



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Inverted power dynamics, M/M, Murder Rick, Past Rape/Non-con, Worldbuilding, good things will eventually start happening in this fic, not-so Murder Negan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2019-07-08 00:52:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15919614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwCoffeeNo/pseuds/AwCoffeeNo
Summary: It's not Negan's fault. It's not. How was he supposed to know Rick Grimes, the gentle farmer, would turn out to have a minor in complete-and-utter-psychopath?





	1. The Farmers

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [here](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AbFwnJ2PrmTvbd3b6ykmtgnErBBz6csBwfcjOAUB_Z1hSocvQoTje5Q/).

It’s not Negan’s fault. 

It’s not.

How was he supposed to know that Rick, Rick the fucking farmer, had a minor in absolute _psychopath?_

There were more guns in Georgia than people before this all started, surely. Now, Negan would bet that there are more guns than canned goods, toilet paper, Tylenol, and water filters, all combined. Guns, Negan and his people have. Guns, and trucks, each one bigger than the last. And people, Negan has, thirty-some hardened and heavily armed fucks. But any of that other good stuff? Not so much. 

It’s been going on since the end of winter. Now, at the tail end of April, there isn’t much left but empty shelves inside the warehouse, where they’ve been holding up since it started freezing at night. 

Worse, the long and increasingly-risky supply runs his group makes with him at the helm are turning up next-to-nothing. Instead, Negan’s been finding himself leading multi-day exercises in frustration and wasting gas, which leave him so goddamn livid he can't see straight for it. These inevitably end with him breaking things and beating that absolute fuck out of the closest inanimate object until his knuckles are split, bloody, and painfully bruised for days. 

He won’t let them go hungry. He’ll tear the world down and fuck it upside-down and sideways before he lets that happen. Not when they’ve been with him since the beginning, dragging him kicking and screaming out of the Georgia hospital Lucille was shipped off to in the last days of the old world and into the new one. 

Not Dwight, who’s saved his skin more times than he can count. Dwight, who kept him and the rest of their group alive until Negan came out of his grief-induced catatonia enough to start saving the people who saved him. 

Not Sherry, who Dwight looks at like she’s the best thing since sliced bread -- like he could subsist on nothing but her and fucking water and sunlight. Negan doesn’t see it, but God help him if he's gonna get in the way. 

Not Frankie. Frankie, who was there when Lucille went. Frankie, who took one look at Negan, collapsed, weeping and useless in the hospital hallway, and turned around and did what he couldn’t in an instant. Who put Lucille down, and emerged seconds later, her baby-blue scrubs drenched in blood as she dragged him from the scene. 

Negan would rather die, and die bloody at that, than let anything happen to any of them. 

So. Here’s what Negan’s got: an awful lot of guns, and a dryness in his throats which accompanies the awful knowledge that hungry dogs are never loyal, and something's gotta give. A whole lot of guns, a whole lot of cars, and not damn much in the way of food. 

He’s got the tropic-seeming, cock-sweltering, balls-melting heat of the arriving summer, even though it’s not even May yet. Shouldn’t one of the only perks of this whole thing be that climate change is over now? 

It doesn’t feel like it. Spring has descended with a vengeance on Georgia, and it’s turned everything goopy and hot in a very unsexy kinda way, making the back of his leather jacket stick against his undershirt and adhere to his skin almost immediately after putting it on. Their generators just can’t keep up. He misses Virginia, but knows, at the same time, that the D.C area must be nothing but wolves of men by now. The underpopulated backwoods of Georgia are infinitely more survivable. 

He’s not sure all the charisma in the damn world will do much, at this point. That doesn’t stop him from slicking back his hair and trying his best to rub the circles out from under his eyes before he leaves his room to meet Dwight. 

“Law of averages, right, D?” he asks when he meets the younger man by the now-heavily saunafied garage outside. It's full of trucks, which as of recently have been trucking in a whole lot of nothing. 

Dwight’s face is already contorted into worry, and they haven't even started yet. 

Negan revs up the truck and puts a grin on his face like he really is that fucking stupid, and doesn’t know exactly how fucked they are. 

God, if Dwight plays any of that country music _shit_... 

\-- 

It’s when he and Dwight are on their way back, bearing pitifully little for their efforts (it turns out Negan _would_ rather eat canned okra than starve, when presented with the choice quite literally), bleary with three days together of sleeping in the truck, and aching with multiple days worth of exertion, that he sees it. 

Since the winter, fucking _Terminus_ has been turned into a goddamn farm. 

He knows the instant that he sees it what he’s gonna do. 

He’s gonna take those beautiful vegetables, those chickens, those swaying ears of corn. He’s gonna take them all, screw whoever grew them. No question about it. He thinks of tightening the notches of his belt. He thinks of his people, having to skip meals. 

He thinks _I’m not gonna ask nice_. 

\--

The plan was simple: arrive at night, hop the fence. Kill the guard and take everything that they can carry, then get out fast. By the time that whatever gentle farmers who’d taken up the mantle of Negan’s least-favorite local cannibals managed to catch their trail and come to kick their asses, (if they even dared do such a thing), they’d be so heavily armed and unfuckable they'd probably just turn back. No one would even have to die. The other group would stick their tails between their legs and run. 

Their plan was _shit_. 

It doesn’t quite sink in exactly how far off his appraisal of the situation was until he’s on his knees out in front of the converted train station, stuck in the center of a little semicircle of his men and sweating as the sun soaks into the black leather of his jacket, the leader of the other group -- _Rick_ \-- shaking an axe in his face and yelling. 

They’re all here, the whole team he brought with him from the warehouse. There’s him, Dwight, Simon, Mark, fat Joey (already blubbering like a goddamn baby). Arat. Frankie. 

Negan’s not crying yet, not exactly, but he’s not above admitting he’s scared shitless. He was so wrong. So goddamn wrong. And now, they’re all gonna pay. 

It was all going fine. They killed the guard. The whole place was quiet. They moved fast and silent in the night, and Negan was so proud of his people. Apex predators, all of them, they were the kind of people who get to stay alive in this world for a few golden minutes. 

But then Negan had to go and get spotted by a goddamn kid playing cop. 

The other group scoured the whole area, as soon as they caught them. Joey and Frankie were supposed to be playing watch, waiting in the cars. They aren’t supposed to be here, pale as shit and crying as Rick’s people surround them. Rick's people all look like the killers, all taut and hard, their bodies screaming threat in a way which makes Negan insubstantial under his jacket. 

He's not crying, not yet, but he’s already wondering whether he’s gonna live to regret the few seconds he hesitated. In those seconds, he could have turned and shot. His gun’s silenced. He could have killed the kid in the Sherrif's hat, and everything could have gone off without a hitch. 

Rick gets down in Negan’s face. “Who’s your head guy, huh?” 

Rick’s hands clench around his ax. It’s not a question. It’s the first step to bloody fucking murder. 

Negan can’t speak. Can’t make his mouth move. He’s not here. He’s knee deep in an alternate timeline, where he has the guts to pull the trigger, and is already home and trying to sleep through the guilt which would come with killing a goddamn kid in cold blood, and wondering which version of reality is gonna turn out worse.

“Don’t make me guess, because if I gotta guess? Might just not like the first one. Might have to go two-for-two. You understanding me?” 

Fuck. He can’t say it. Can’t lift his head to look at Dwight. 

Instead, he looks up into Rick’s eyes, forcing himself to hold the icy glare of Rick’s gaze steady. “Get it over with, prick,” he spits out. “You gonna, what, _kill me_ if I don’t? Then _do it_.” 

That’s the wrong thing to say. Negan knows it, the instant it’s out of his mouth. He sees Rick tense in anger and feels himself start to shake with fear in the same moment, as though some cosmic tremor went through them both at the same time, but with an equal and opposite effect. 

“I ain’t gonna _kill you_ ,” Rick spits, leaning so close to Negan that he can feel the heat of the other man’s breath on his face, his voice a low sneer. “No, I’ll make you _watch_ , while I kill someone you _care about_ , and then, I’ll ask again. 

Kneeling next to Negan: Frankie. 

She’s crying, quietly, and Negan hears her breath hitch with fear when Rick turns to her. _He really means it_ , Negan thinks, feeling like all the blood drains from his face. _He’d really do it._

For a second, too many things are happening at once. 

Negan is begging, words spilling out of his mouth before he even thinks of their consequences: “No, no, please no, kill _me_! You damn coward, kill me!” 

One of Rick’s people is stepping forward, a bewilderingly samurai-looking chick, putting a hand on Rick’s arm as though she’s going to stop him from doing it. 

Frankie is wiping her eyes and baring her teeth and saying “ _Then get it over with_.” 

None of it matters, though, because in the next moment Dwight is yelling over all of them: “Me! It’s me.” 

Rick turns. Rick goddamn smiles as he raises his ax. 

He doesn’t hesitate for a second. He swings down, hard and fast. 

It’s all over in an instant. 

Negan doesn’t let himself look away. He wants to look away. Dwight screams, but he can’t hear Dwight scream. All he can hear is the ringing in his own ears, and the sound of people all around him crying. 

There’s always so much fucking blood. 

\-- 

“Now we’re going to talk,” Rick says. “Just you and I, Negan.” 

All he can see is Dwight’s skull, split in half right down the center, eyes cracking apart. He barely hears what Rick says. His body is limp as putty as Rick pulls him away from his people and toward the guard shack by the gate, feet scrabbling uselessly in protest. Up the stairs they go, and into the enclosed space, Rick throwing Negan painfully to the floor and slamming the door behind them. 

All alone. 

Suddenly and catastrophically, Negan thinks he knows exactly what’s going on. The gut-twisting rush of panic punctures the catatonic, dream-like distance that fear has put between him and reality, snapping him back in an instant to the enclosed, sweltering space where he falls on the floor, hard. 

The spring sun has warmed up the little room to sauna-like temperatures. It’s hot and humid and suffocating. Rick steps forward, toward him, and Negan's really losing it, all of a sudden. He can’t breathe -- no, _scratch that_ , he’s breathing way, way too much, hyperventilating and half-crawling away from Rick. 

He’s not crying, not exactly, but his body hasn’t quite gotten the memo on that one, and tears are starting to run tracks down the blood and grime splattered on his face. 

_Fuck. Fuck, fuck_. He should be able to handle this, but he can’t. 

Negan knows what men like Rick do to people like him if they get them alone. Knows it as his own damn truth. 

Decades now stretch between then and now. That world is gone, a new one sprung up in its place. He was younger, then. Stupider. _Prettier._ It still doesn’t sit right, even after all these years and all the other awful things that span between then and now. It still turns his stomach. 

He was freshly twenty-two. He'd just bought his first road bike. He’d been at a bar off Route 1 and stayed too late into the night. He’d been too drunk. They’d followed him out back, the three of them --

There it goes again: the shaking. _Stop that shit_ , he warns himself. _Right now_. If he thinks about that right now, he’s probably gonna puke all over Rick-the-Dick’s bloodstained boots. Normally, he’s in a position to be able to kill men like Rick. _Men like Rick_ were the reason he started calling his group _the Saviors._

But now, he's entirely at Rick's mercy. He tells himself he’s gonna let whatever's gonna happen just... happen. He’s gonna grit his teeth and _take it_ , because he deserves it. He got them into this hot, steaming pile of shit, and he’s not gonna do anything which might make it worse. 

But Rick is looking at him funny, now, as the silence between them stretches long, punctured only by Negan’s own frantic breathing. Rick's cocking his head and staring. _“What?”_ he asks incredulously, like there’s no reasonable reason on earth Negan’s staring up at him from where he’s cowering on the ground, his eyes glazing over with terror. “Get up. Get a hold of yourself.” 

Negan scrambles to obey, to force himself upright on feet that don’t want to hold him, chest heaving. 

“We’re gonna talk, you and I,” Rick says. “We’re gonna talk about how you got yourselves into this situation, this situation where you’re lucky I didn’t kill every last one of you.” 

Negan thinks, _get it over with_. 

Negan thinks, _I know we’re not here to talk_. 

A mistake. The silence stretches on too long. Rick’s hand reaches out and hits him, open-handed, across the cheek. “Are you listening to me? Speak when you’re spoken to.” 

“Yes,” he says, hating the way his voice shakes around the words. “Yes, _yes_ , I’m listening.” 

Rick stares him down as he speaks. Negan tries to hold his gaze, but can’t. He looks at their feet, at the dust and blood between them. 

“Why did you do it?” Rick asks, almost gently, almost kindly, as though his face isn’t still painted red with Dwight’s blood. “Why on earth would you do something that colossally stupid? See, me? I wanted to kill all of you, soon as I heard you were here, stealing our crops. It’s only because of Michonne out there that I didn’t. Why would you get all your people killed, Negan? That the kinda leader you are?” 

_Because we were hungry_ , Negan thinks. He’ll never say that. He’ll let Rick turn him inside-out and wipe the floor with him before he admits to that. “Maybe because that’s just the kinda asshole I am, Rick,” he spits back even as his voice breaks around the words. “Maybe because I didn’t think you’d be a complete _fucking psychopath_.” 

If there are repercussions for that, well. Negan would rather Rick take them out on him than admit to weakness. 

Rick’s grabbing his face, turning his eyes to face him. “Don’t lie. Don’t _lie_. It’ll only make things worse.” 

Like things could possibly get any worse for Negan. 

Rick goes on, stretching the words out long and slow like Negan’s fucking stupid: “Let’s get something straight. You are only alive if I feel you are com-pli-ant. I’ve got terms. You fucked with the wrong people when you showed up here, and now? Now I own you. Whatever shit you have? Consider half of it ours. Your stuff, your people, you… It’s all mine, now, you get that? So don’t lie. Try again. First one's free.” 

Rick’s hand is still on his face. He’s standing way, way too close to Negan. Another blow comes at the end of that sentence, but it feels perfunctory, barely a graze of knuckles. “Talk. All of it’s mine, Negan, and if it’s not, it’s gonna be real soon. You don’t got nothin' to hide.” 

Something inside Negan just... snaps. 

He’s horrified by what comes out of his mouth: “We don’t have shit, you idiot. Do you want guns? Fuck, we’ve got guns. But food, medicine, any of that good stuff? We _can’t_. We don’t even have enough for ourselves.” 

And, again, Rick’s looking at him funny. But Negan just can’t shut his mouth. He'd do anything, he realizes, to get Rick to stop looking at him like he's looking at him, right now. 

He goes on: “You wanna know why we came to take your food? Use _literally two_ of your neurons, and you’ll figure it out. We were hungry. We were just hungry.” 

Suddenly, Rick’s all tension, all rage like he was before, drawn taught in a way which awakens an abject horror in some deep, primal part of Negan. He shudders back from Rick’s grasp as Rick screams, “You _killed Sasha!_ ” 

“I didn’t think we had a choice!” Negan yells back, struggling against Rick’s grip, not sure if it comes out a scream or a sob. 

Moments later, Rick’s letting go of him. 

Negan sinks to his knees before Rick. It’s not subservience: his legs just won’t hold him any longer. 

\-- 

His men can’t look him in the eye, when they stumble back to the circle, Rick’s hand still knotted in the back of his leather jacket, dragging him forward on shaking legs. They know what men like Rick do, when they get you alone, even if Rick doesn’t. They look at the dirt at their feet. They look at how Negan’s struggling to walk. They don’t look him in the eye. 

\-- 

Negan ain’t been right, not since the beginning, and everyone knows it. 

Frankie knows better than anyone. She’s known since she pulled him wordless from a hospital in Georgia, all-but catatonic. A long time ago, she’d try to get him to talk about it sometimes, all nurse talk, say _you haven’t been right since your wife died_. He’d snap back the same thing each time: _you were a nurse, not a goddamn shrink_. After a bit, she’d given up. 

When they stagger back to the warehouse that night, beaten-up and weepy and wordless, Negan doesn’t say a word. He knows he should say something, knows he should reassure everyone that it’s all gonna be okay and that he’s gonna kill that Rick Grimes motherfucker sooner or later, so no one should lose sleep over it. 

He should go to Sherry and tell her that he’s gonna kill Rick Grimes twice over for what he did to Dwight, but Sherry’s burning up with so much cold rage Negan’s pretty sure he’d get punched, regardless of what comes out of his mouth. 

Instead of doing any of that, he locks himself away upstairs in a bathroom until Frankie shows up and starts pounding on the door and yelling. 

They aren’t sleeping together. Sure, they sleep in the same bed, and sure, everyone thinks Negan’s re-arranging Frankie’s guts on the regular. But honest-to-God? They’re just sleeping in the same bed. Frankie still won’t take off her engagement ring, or admit to anyone that her cardiologist fiancé isn’t out there, somewhere. Negan still wakes up more nights than not with Lucille’s name dying on his lips. They ain’t sleeping together. 

“Negan, come out of there,” Frankie’s yelling. “Come out! You’re scaring me!” 

Negan’s sitting on the floor with his back to the door. He looks at the tile floor of the bathroom. He looks up at the grimy underside of the sink, and the mirror, which was broken when they got there, and the stray shards of glass still left on the floor. 

He looks at the tile floor again and starts the loop over. He’s scaring himself. 

He hears a scuffle, on the other side of the door, as Frankie sits down. “What did he do to you, Negan,” she asks softly, and like she already knows what the answer is going to be. “Is there anything I can do? First aid? Anything?” 

A pause. Negan sighs. “Nothing,” he says finally, a rush going through him that’s half relief and half shame. Shame, because he's here on the floor of the bathroom. Here, even though Rick looked into his eyes and promised, out of nowhere, that no one was going to starve. “He didn’t… do... anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why does Negan hate rape so much? let's just explore that in the most PAINFUL way possible huh ??
> 
> .....i had to watch so many youtube videos that were like "top 10 DARK RICK moments on the walking dead" to write this
> 
> i'm not sure if i'm just gonna leave this as a painful one-shot, or turn this into a chaptered fic...... stay turned i guess? pray 4 my classes to go well


	2. Subservience

That night is oddly peaceful. 

Negan sits on the floor in the out-of-the-way bathroom, and counts his way around the loop of _floor, sink, mirror, broken glass_ for what feels like hours. Frankie sits on the other side of the door, but doesn’t say much of anything, leaving things so silent that he can hear her breathing. It’s slow and deliberate, as though Negan might start matching his breaths with hers. 

Sometime late that night, Negan finally gets up. He dusts off his pants, and slips out of the bathroom to find Frankie’s sleeping form, slumped down in sleep against the wall beside the door. She’s still wearing the same clothes as earlier, dirt still staining the knees of her jeans from where she kneeled on the ground beside him, red hair falling out of a braid. 

Carefully, he gathers her up in his arms, and carries her to their bedroom, laying her down in their bed before letting himself collapse next to her, still fully-clothed. 

It seems… peaceful, lying there, listening to Frankie’s even breathing. It seems _wrong_ , for a world where everything has just gotten fucked so badly, that he gets to lie down next to her on a soft bed and relish the few moments of silence. 

It doesn’t last. 

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing he’s aware of is Arat, shaking him awake. 

“You need to _get up_ ,” she hisses in his ear, voice lowered so that she doesn’t wake Frankie. Even though the sun’s still not up and Negan still feels so exhausted it’s like all the bones have been taken out of his body, her tone leaves absolutely no room for argument,

Negan knows Arat’s no-bullshit voice when he hears it. He gets up in an instant. 

\-- 

Turns out, while Negan was off having his little breakdown, even the bare-fucking-minimum of running this place has managed to go off the rails. 

To start: no one’s buried Dwight’s body. 

He doesn’t blame them. No one wanted to spend the night grave-digging, and they have no established cemetery to speak of, just the scrubby woodlands that are bleeding into the back lot out behind the warehouse. It’s half-wild already, bushes and grasses pushing up through the cracks in the pavement and splitting it open. 

_Splitting it open --_

Negan freezes at the entryway of the garage Arat led him to, and snaps his eyes closed for an instant against the flash of recollection: Rick’s ax, falling again and again without mercy on Dwight’s already open cracked-up skull.

It doesn’t help. He sees it anyway. 

Forcing the flashback away, he focuses on the scene in front of him. 

Sherry’s sitting with Dwight’s body, on the floor of their garage. Dwight's been dead for hours and hours. Arat was right. Someone’s got to deal with this. 

The body’s half covered-up in a sheet, something clearly stripped off of somebody’s bed. It’s floral and stained with blood, and Sherry’s pulled it back so it’s not covering up Dwight’s axed-up face at all. No, she’s staring right into Dwight’s mauled features, right through his cracked-open skull, which Negan finds that he can’t make himself look at for more than a second. She has both of her hands interwoven with Dwight’s stiff, white fingers. 

_Shit._

Negan approaches her cautiously. Arat completely evaporated as soon as she showed him where the little nightmare scene was playing out, leaving the two of them alone. The sun’s starting to come up, lighting up the garage through the partially-busted roof. 

“It’s me,” he says, when he sees Sherry stiffen at the sound of his boots crunching on gravel. “I’ll do it. I’m _sorry_ , Sherry.” 

Sherry whirls around with incredible speed, all-but baring her teeth at him. For a second, Negan’s heart jolts faster. It’s a motion he associates with walkers, and for a second and despite all the other much-more-rational information at his disposal, he thinks he’s going to see her eyes glazed-over with death, and her face painted red from the base of her jaw to the white of her teeth with Dwight’s blood. 

But she’s still starkly human, even if she’s almost as pale as Dwight. “Let _me_ do it, Negan,” she snaps. “I’ll kill him, you understand? That asshole Rick. I’ll kill him worse than this, and let you watch while I do it.” 

Negan was just talking about burying Dwight. 

He doesn’t have anything to say to Sherry’s bloodlust. He grinds his palms into his eyes, and thinks of tracing the loop of floor-sink-mirror-glass in the bathroom for hours. He thinks of Rick, promising him that no one was gonna starve if he just cooperated. The hours he wasted, locked away and alone, did little to alleviate the foul feeling the encounter with Rick left him with, and even less to answer the dilemma he now has rattling around in his head. _Subservience, or hunger?_

Ain’t like he doesn’t already know what the answer’s gonna be. He was never going to let any of them starve. 

But he also knows how Sherry will look at him, when he submits to Rick’s group. Woman’s always been a hammer looking for nails, just inches away from having the gravitas to run this whole show without him, and she’s gonna _hate_ him for being weak. Not to even mention how the people who weren’t there that night to watch Rick pulverize Dwight are gonna look at him, or what he’s gonna say to Amber’s little boy, or the duo of teenagers they pulled out of the wilderness a few months back. 

Not like he knew what he was gonna tell them when they ran out of food, either. 

A long time ago, when they used to lose people like this all the time, it’d really, really get to him. It’d leave him wordless and thoughtless, and sick with a feeling so foul that even now, words to describe it escape him. That was when Frankie took to sleeping beside him, the two of them crammed comfortlessly into a sleeping bag together, or lying against each other together on some safehouse bed. “It’s not your fault,” she’d whisper to him, pressed against his back. “None of it is.” 

He’s pretty damn sure she was wrong. 

“I mean,” he says to Sherry finally, forcing some authority which he abso-fuckin-lutely _does not_ feel into his voice. “Let me bury him, before you freak everyone the fuck out staring at him like that.” 

Together, gracelessly and wordlessly, he and Sherry cover up Dwight’s body again. Sherry shakes with reluctance throughout this task. It takes ages for her to unwind her fingers from Dwight’s and help Negan load him into the back of one of the trucks. She stares at Dwight’s hardly recognizable face while Negan stares at the toes of his boots and the bloodstained floral sheet and anywhere but Dwight and Sherry. 

Every flash of Sherry’s face he catches, steel-set in rage and seeped with grief, is so familiar he wants to break down and weep, right the fuck here and right the fuck now. 

He tells himself that he’s glad Lucille went, when she did. 

He’s glad she never had to see this shit. 

\-- 

They drive Dwight’s body in the truck to the edge of the treeline out behind the warehouse. 

Wordlessly, Negan gives Sherry his gun, and she sits on the roof of the truck, shooting back any walker that draws too close to him while he’s digging through the thick clay soil. He doesn’t even bother to look up and see them coming, or see them fall when he hears the whoosh of Sherry’s silent bullets flying through the air. He just keeps digging until his arms shake with the exertion. Leather long gone, his tee-shirt soaks through with sweat, and clings to his shoulders. The dirt gets harder, and more densely packed, the deeper down he gets. He keeps going. 

Once he’s dug out a rectangle of earth wide enough and deep enough that no monster will dare try to unearth Dwight, Sherry cries, and Negan puts Dwight in the grave. 

He feels a million miles away, hearing the thud of the body at the bottom of the hole. One of the calluses on his hand has split open, and is bleeding, sluggishly. 

Sherry puts the gun back into his hands. He shoots walkers, one after another, and she shovels dirt back into the grave, still weeping. 

\-- 

Rick should have washed off the blood, that night, before he went to find Carl. 

He thinks about that an awful lot, in the tense few days between the Savior’s attack on their compound at Terminus, and their first visit to Negan’s people: how he must have looked that night. He thinks about the way he stumbled from the scene the instant Negan’s people left, the blood of a man who’s name he never learned staining his face and his hands. 

He found Carl just barely removed from the worst of it, lurking in a doorway. Carol was there with him, her arms wrapped around him protectively, but he knew instantly from the looks on their faces that both of them had been able to see everything. 

Carol’s eyes meet his instantly, and he sees reflected in them a mirror of his own rage. 

But Carl? Carl’s eyes are a blank slate, even as Rick prys him away from Carol and takes him in his own arms, even as Rick grasps Carl’s face and angles it up to his own so he can inspect his features, getting the flaky, half-dried-up blood that’s on his own hands all over his son’s face. 

Carl is _twelve_ , and tonight, Carl found a monster lurking in the darkness of his own home. A monster in black leather with a silenced gun. Nothing Rick can ever say or do will fully erase the moments between when Carl found Negan, and when he came to set things right. The mere fact that there were a few precious moments where his son was at the mercy of a stranger means that Rick’s failed as a parent. Again. 

All the blood in the world can’t make that right, and that’s not even the worst part. The worst part? The worst part is, this isn’t even the first time. Carl’s already seen so many monsters that Rick thinks it didn’t even scare Carl like it scared him. 

“You’re alright, you’re _alright_ ,” Rick just keeps saying, over and over, hardly aware that he’s crying. “I would _never_ let them hurt you.” 

“He was never gonna shoot me, dad,” Carl says, and after that, he says nothing. 

Rick cries. Carl does nothing. Dried blood flakes off Rick’s hands. 

“You _saved us_ , Carl,” Rick says fervently. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry you had to --” 

“Dad. Stop.” 

Retrospectively, he’s put it all together: why Carol pulled Carl away from him, moments after that, leaving him alone to discover the tears streaking his face and running together with blood. 

He’s seen the look he saw in their eyes before.

 _Fear_. 

He saw it in Michonne’s eyes, when he stepped forward to kill the redhead girl kneeling beside Negan. He saw it reflected back at him from everyone when he stood up before his people in a church, drenched in Gareth’s blood, and told them that they were going back. That there would be sanctuary at Terminus, even if they had to raze the whole place and build it again from the ground up.

He saw it again, when they came back to Terminus and gathered up the bodies, both living and dead, and burned them together out back. Gabriel had wanted to say a few words about God, and wanted to bury the humans in graves, and Rick had outright refused. 

He saw it, reflected a billion times brighter and stronger, in Negan’s eyes tonight. Fear, as the other man sunk to his knees before him. 

Rick knows subservience. Can see it, past the fear. Surely, nothing on earth could have been clearer than the way Negan sunk to his knees before Rick. Nothing on earth could have been clearer than the redness Rick saw in Negan’s eyes when he promised him food, for his people. 

The moment Rick said that, he knew that he had Negan trapped. 

Here’s the truth Rick knows: only blood stops blood. But now, after smearing the ground with Negan’s people’s blood, he thinks hunger might be an equally powerful motivator. 

\-- 

They give it three days. 

Negan’s people’s compound is maybe an hour’s drive from Terminus, halfway into the suburbs of Columbia. It’s not a difficult trip. Still, the night before, he and Michonne hardly sleep. They sit up for the better part of the night, wide awake, plotting out their route, and going over the crew of ten they plan to take. 

“How do you know they weren’t lying to you?” Michonne asks him anxiously as they pour over the map spread out in front of them. It’s the same kind of question she’s been asking all night. “That they really are there? How do you _know_ they won’t meet us with force?” 

This makes Rick smile a little cocky grin. “Well, we knew that warehouse was inhabited. Just didn’t know who was living there. Make sense. And besides, Negan wasn’t in any position to be tellin’ lies, not after we had our little talk.” 

He pauses for a moment after that, seeing the way Michonne’s eyes crinkle a little bit, and her smooth forehead furrows. He can’t place the expression, but plows forward anyway. 

“We’ll be bringin’ them food,” he begins in a hushed voice. “You all know that. I’ve told everyone, it’s goodwill, but it ain’t. They really need the food. It’s _leverage_.” 

Rick hesitates again, for a moment. He hasn’t told anyone the specifics of this, not yet, became in some ways, it is cold. But it’s also necessary. 

Michonne is nodding along with him, her sharp eyes flashing as though she already knows exactly where he’s going. “If they meet us with force, they get nothing," he continues. "Even if they behave perfectly? We give them a week’s food. Nothing more, hell, a little less. Have them bring everyone out. Men, women, children, whoever they have, so we know exactly how many mouths Negan has to feed. Then next week, and the week after that, and the week after that? We have them in exactly the same place they are now.” 

Michonne narrows her eyes quizzically. “And… how are you sure that Negan was telling the truth they were hungry? Because if that were me, in his position? That’s exactly what I’d say: that my people didn’t have anything to offer.”

He shakes his head: “No, he wasn’t lying. I’m sure of it. When he was alone, with me? He was… he was terrified, Michonne. More so that I thought he would be.” 

There it is again: that look in Michonne’s eyes, the one he can’t place. She slides her hands across the floor, and wraps them around his. “Rick,” she begins, suddenly much quieter, even though it’s the dead of night, and they are completely alone, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Rick’s bedroom. “I know you. I know what you would, and wouldn’t do. We all do. But to him, I think it looked like…” 

She trails off, as though she expects him to fill in the blank himself. She’s not looking at him: she’s looking at her hands, on top of his hands. He surprised she’s touching him like this, but he doesn’t move away. 

“Looked like what, Michonne?” 

It doesn’t even occur to him. He’s racking his brain, thinking of anything even remotely plausible. It seemed completely logical to him: he’d needed Negan alone, needed to give him a chance to break down, away from the incentive of saving face in front of his people. 

_Does she mean torture?_ Even now, some part of his mind rebels against that. Says, _I would never, never, torture. It’s wrong, even now_. But Rick knows he would. If it would protect the people he’s brought here to Terminus, or protect the sanctuary he’s built out of this place, he would in an instant, and he wouldn’t lose sleep over it. 

But that doesn’t make sense. If he’d wanted to torture Negan… he would have done it publically. Let them all watch. 

Michonne doesn’t mince words. Never has. Seeing his blank look, she says it low, and through teeth clenched together, like the words burn her as they come out of her mouth: “I think he thought you were going to rape him, Rick.” 

And there it is: it all clicks into place. The way Negan broke down, the instant the door closed behind them. The way he’d put as much distance between himself and Rick as was physically possible in the tiny guard shack. The way all of Negan’s people had looked at him, when they’d emerged less than an hour later, like he was lower than the fucking dirt he walked on. 

There aren’t a lot of things left that turn his stomach, but this does. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth. 

“You know I would _never_ \--” he starts, voice tight, but Michonne cuts him off. 

“Of course I know that. But they don’t. He didn’t.” 

Rick runs his hands through his hair, fighting back a wave of horror. 

“Nothing happened,” he says finally. “We aren’t like that. It don’t change nothing.” 

He’s not quite sure he believes that, himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many times can i re-play the new hozier ep while i smash this out? stay turned 
> 
> thanks to all for the very motivational comments last week! i appreciate you all so much <33


	3. Visiting Hours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! small heads-up: i am re-tagging this fic a little to reflect what it's going to look like in the long-term. not to worry: none of the content warnings are changing -- i've been thinking about this, and i wanted to clarify to everyone that there won't be any present-time sexual assault in this fic (although it does remain a theme b/c it was something that happened in the past, and because of the nature of the world in this au) 
> 
> ultimately, this fic will be headed in a positive and happy (er) direction by the end. promise. 
> 
> it's been a rough kinda week for me + a lot of people, so love you all and hope you enjoy! <3

Rick’s people arrive three days later, at the crack of dawn, just like he said they would. 

By that time, Negan’s people are ready for their visit, with every piece of equipment in their admittedly-impressive arsenal of guns and weapons of war carefully cataloged and laid out. _Everything’s mine_ , Rick had told him, _and if it ain’t, it will be real soon_. In the tight-strung pre-dawn hours of that morning before Rick arrives, it feels as real as divine prophecy. 

When they come, they are utterly unassumingly: a couple of vehicles and a mid-size cargo truck pull up to their gate that morning, nothing more than that. There’s no show of force, no repeat of the dramatic scene Rick’s group staged when they first met. They’ve got enough vehicles to transport maybe ten people, no more than that. 

Negan will go to let them in alone. 

That’s what they decided, him and his people: there would be no threat, no resistance, no nothing.

He’s so, so grateful it’s only a few cars and only a few people. 

\-- 

The morning he and Sherry buried Dwight had stretched into a long and sweltering afternoon, hot and dizzy and smelling of the thick clay earth they dug up, the air blazing around them like the inside of a kiln. 

It turns out, it takes a long time for one man to dig a grave, and a longer time for one woman to put six feet worth of dirt between herself and her husband. Even days later, the smell of clay had lingered on Negan’s hands, the dirt caught under his fingernails and seeming to seep right under his skin. 

When he and Sherry stumble back inside, his hands are so stiff and tense from holding a shovel that his fingers won’t quite uncurl all the way, left half-clenched in a grip. Sherry’s eyes are veiny and red like she’s a teenaged stoner three bowls deep, and he’s pretty sure that the sunburn he acquired during the process is already turning the bridge of his nose and the high points of his cheeks that same exact color. 

Another shitty thing about being a few years into the apocalypse: all the fucking sunscreen in this entire useless-fucking world is expired. That’s all he’s thinking about, as he trudges up to the door of the warehouse still smelling like death and mud: how shitty it is that there’s no sunscreen left on earth that will keep him from burning up in the Georgia sun. 

But then they walk through the door of the warehouse, and on the other side, there’s everyone. Waiting for them. 

Every single one of Negan’s people. 

Waiting for _him_ to nut up and tell them what the hell is going on. 

Months ago, they cleared out the front of the warehouse, right near the stairway leading to the second story, and set it up as a communal area. It’s not exactly cozy: the whole of it is built from shipping pallets and mismatched linens and filled with disjointed and often wildly jerry-rigged furnishing, but people still naturally congregate here. 

In better times, Negan’s stood by this doorway and addressed his people with his shoulders squared and his back straight, all dirty jokes and flashing white teeth. Now, they peer back at him with eyes that glint bright and desperate for a moment as the outside light streams in through the open door, and then go dark again in an instant as it swings closed behind him. Now, he feels utterly unlike himself in a way which makes him feel too big and too small all at once: both filling too much space and drawing too many eyes, and also utterly unable to fill the larger-than-life role of _Negan, leader of the Saviors_. 

Dirt’s still all over him. It stains his hands brown-red. 

Amber’s boy has her brilliant blonde hair, and Mark’s dark eyes. He’s fussing softly from where he’s swaddled up and pressed against her chest. They still haven’t dared to name him, and everyone just calling him Baby. Tanya and Frankie are sitting across from each other, cross-legged on the floor with their backs against the concrete blocks supporting the staircase, their hands clasped together. The men are mostly standing, shifting around awkwardly, bloodlust and fear mixing in equal parts on their faces. Even the damn teenagers are here, stick-skinny and silent, staring at their sneaker-clad feet like Negan’s their goddamn high school guidance counselor and they’ve just been caught with notes up their sleeves during the SATs. 

They all look at him, and the door swings shut, and under the weight of the collective gaze of thirty, Negan sinks to the ground. 

He’s not sure what he expects to happen next, as his knees meet the ground, and the rest of his body follows after it until he’s just sitting there on the dirty floor, his back against the door. A swift kick in the side from Sherry? Sure. He deserves it. But nothing comes. 

Instead, she sits down beside him, and moments later, everyone else is following suit, until they’re all sitting on the ground, spread out in front of Negan like kids at storytime. 

Fuck. Fuck. He can do this. He _has_ to do this, regardless of how he feels about it. 

He drags his hands through his hair and, after a moment, he finds his voice. He tells them what they need to hear. 

And, miracle of miracles? When he tells them Rick’s bringing them food, he swears, no one even remembers hearing the part about half their shit now belonging to Rick’s group. 

He tells them if they cooperate, it’s all gonna be okay. 

The gaze Sherry fixes him with after his people disperse is exactly what he was expecting, but it still slashes into him like a butcher’s knife -- her furious eyes are red-rimmed and empty in a way which tells Negan clearer than any words she could have possibly said that she’ll only sleep tonight by dreaming elaborate, bloody dreams of cutting Rick Grimes into tiny little pieces. She looks at him like he’s the limpest-dicked motherfucker she’s ever met, and he knows she’s right. 

But everyone else? They’re all skittish, sure, but they aren’t simmering with the raw fury Negan was expecting. They’re twitchy and nervous and frayed around the edges, but he knows, he _knows_ that beyond that, all they’re thinking about is roasting fresh corn, and biting into apples, and hoping furtively that Rick’s people will bring them canned meat to eat alongside their depressing stash of canned okra. 

It’s dangerous, thinking like that. It’s like a sedative, a drug, the fucking blue pill from the Matrix. And despite knowing that, pretty rapidly, Negan finds himself starting to envy the fuck out of them. Doesn’t want to, but he does. 

Instead of thinking fucking happy thoughts about vegetables, he finds he can barely sleep two hours together.

The instant his body dares slip into dreams that night, he finds himself catapulted years backward into the past. His encounter with Rick, regardless of how apparently-misconstrued it was on his part, has managed nonetheless to knock down some two decades of barriers he’s built in his mind surrounding a particularly horrible night in mid-October. It’s depressing, how easily it happened: a few minutes of misplaced fear, and the feeling of Rick’s knuckles slapping against his cheek, and now, here he is, everything in his mind flying around in a gross, dumb fury. It’s depressing, how some twenty-years later, he still can’t make himself call it what it was by name. 

He swears he can still feel their rough hands on him like it happened yesterday. He can still feel the vodka-heaviness in his limbs which softened his blows when he tried to fight back. Can still feel every bruise they left on his body like he’ll wake in the morning to find them there again, staining his skin a horrifying red-purple. 

Frankie says nothing, when he wakes in the night, over and over. He knows he wakes her up too when he jolts into wakefulness with his whole body tensed for a fight. He knows he _keeps_ her up as he lies there, gasping for breath for long minutes which seem to stretch on forever. 

He feels bad, keeping her up. If he had a couch to sleep on, he’d take a pillow and crawl off to sleep there instead. But she doesn’t complain. She doesn’t even make him turn around to face her, or say anything. She just lies there in silence and rubs circles into his back through his tee-shirt until they both fall asleep again, over and over. 

At least it keeps his head clear. He knows exactly who Rick Grimes could be, clear as day. Even if he ain’t that man yet, Negan saw it in his eyes and felt it in his blows: he could be that man still. This world is great at making men like that. 

\--

The dread morning comes, and it comes in silence. 

Negan didn’t even try to sleep. He’s been awake since midway through the night, and watched the dimensionless darkness fade back into an off-black navy, and then into an underwhelming dawn. It’s already halfway to being overcast, by the time what Rick’s brought in the way of people roll up to their gates, and it’s an underwhelming set of clouds, too: a light grey, flat and dimensionless and too lacking in character to be truly ominous, leaking a thin and foggy drizzle which clings to everything and cuts down on the visibility depressingly. 

That morning, everyone stays inside, just like he told them to. They’re alone, him and Rick’s people. They turn off their vehicles, and Negan walks up to open the gate alone, the gravel crunching under his boots the only audible sound. 

He keeps his hands up as he walks, and a half-smile on his face, as if to say, _I come in peace._

Then Rick gets out of one of the cars. 

For a second, it downright takes Negan’s breath away. 

Since that night, he could swear Rick’s shrunk down to two-thirds of his original size. Facing him on his feet and on even ground, Negan’s taller than him by a comfortable margin. Even if Rick’s body is still made up of nothing but lethal muscle -- which is all strikingly in evidence even though his button-down shirt -- in the daylight and with the clarity of mind which comes with it, Negan can see that he and Rick are fairly evenly physically matched. And that’s after Negan’s been forced to subsist on canned vegetables and subpar game animals for the better part of three months. 

But what really makes Negan’s stomach bottom out is how _pretty_ he is. 

It’s an absolutely horrifying thought. But it’s undeniably true. 

Rick’s got these wild, baby-blue eyes. In the light of day and without the biting fury which blazed in them before, they’re almost disarmingly lovely. The muted light catches the lines of his lashes and colors them brown-gold, and the mist in the air is sticking to his curly hair, and to the length of his beard. 

Negan knows without a doubt that if he’d met Rick under other circumstances -- say, if he’d caught Rick’s gaze from across a bar in a pre-walker world -- it would have made him forget his wedding vows and the woman who was the love of his whole good-for-nothing-life in an instant, and rush to slip off his wedding band under the bar like the piece of shit he is. 

“Negan,” Rick says evenly, stepping up to the gate. “You _don’t_ want to make me have to ask.” 

The sound of Rick’s voice breaks him out of his thoughts. It’s cold and hard and completely mismatched with Rick’s features, and... _there it is_ : the inevitable wave of nausea hits him, and with it, the phantom remembrance of age-old violation, made arguably worse by the way Rick’s gaze softened him just moments before. 

“Well,” he breathes, letting a little bit of his normal, capital-n _Negan_ tone into his voice to cover the way his breath catches in his throat. His mouth is filling with the taste of heavy metal. “If it ain’t a brand-new day, Rick. Come on in!” 

As he pulls the gate open, the metal hinges giving a metallic groan, he realizes that he’s the dumbest fuck alive to be placated by this little display of Rick’s. 

A cargo truck, an old SUV, and a little, beat-up 4-by-4 truck. Ten people, and three cars, which Rick leads in on foot. It’s not a gesture of faith: rather, Rick is just that goddamn confident that Negan and his people won’t meet him with any kind of resistance. 

No, he’s walking into Negan’s corner of the world on his own two feet without a care in the world, because he _knows_ they won’t put up jack shit in the way of a fight. He’s downright rubbing it in Negan’s face that he’s a useless piece of shit of a leader who can’t provide for his people, and who’s dumb enough that he never thought twice about planting a motherfucking garden or policing up any of the stray farm animals running about. 

Worse: Rick’s completely fucking right. He could stick his dick right down Negan’s throat right now, and he’d have no choice but to smile, and swallow, and say _please_ and _thank you_. 

Damned if that doesn’t just grind his gears in exactly the wrong way. 

“Well,” Negan says, “ain’t this a cozy little gathering? Just make yourself the hell at home, I guess.” 

He really should learn to keep his mouth shut. 

Rick rakes his eyes up and down him like he’s reading Negan’s whole life history from the breadth of his shoulders and the spread of his legs, and steps forward, right into Negan’s face. His air is easy and utterly untroubled: like he already knows everything there is to know about Negan, and he’s utterly unimpressed. “Careful how you’re talkin’ to me, Negan,” he breathes, cocking his head to one side. “You do remember our little talk, don’t you?” 

_You are only alive if I feel you are com-pli-ant._

Yeah, Negan remembers. Such a good little talk it was that half his people probably still think Rick tore him a brand-new hole or two that night. He’s tempted, reflexively, to snarl something to that exact effect and see if it gets a squirm out of Rick. It’d be a good gauge of character, but he’s not quite reckless enough to try. Instead, he grinds his heel into the gravel, and lowers his gaze. “I remember _very clearly_ ,” he says, unable to completely keep a note of something pained and tense out of his voice. “I got it, I promise, I got it real good.” 

“Then where’s your people, huh?” This isn’t Rick speaking. It’s some redneck-looking guy Negan’s never seen before, who’s hopped out from the back of the red pickup and walked over, a crossbow slung over his shoulder. His eyes peer at Negan through such narrow slits that Negan can’t parse his expression at all. 

“All inside. You can pull your vehicles into the bay on the left, and --” 

Rick shakes his head. “We’ll do this right here. Bring ‘em out -- all of them, and I do mean any living thing here. I want to see every man, woman and child. Animals, if you’ve got any. I need to know exactly who’s here.” 

“Okay, Rick, but we’re --” 

“Just do it, Negan.” 

“Everyone,” the archer grunts. “Unarmed. We ain’t asking.” 

_All friends here, there’s no need to worry._ That’s what he was going to say, if he could get something that ludicrous out of his mouth without choking on it. 

\-- 

Amber and Mark hide their boy. 

Negan doesn’t question it, when they emerge late, and Amber’s arms are cradling the stray cat that’s been living with them in the warehouse instead of her own child. He doesn’t want Rick’s people to see the little angel they’ve got, either, and he says a half-assed, half-remembered prayer to whoever’s listening that Amber and Mark have got him swaddled away somewhere very hidden and safe. 

But once they’re gathered outside, Rick nods to the archer and the samurai woman -- _Daryl_ , he calls the man, and the woman _Michonne_. “Check the building,” Rick instructs curtly, and they go through the doors Negan’s people just came out of. 

His stomach bottoms out, and he feels as a wave of that same fear goes through all of his group. He watches as Amber’s fingers run nervously through the cat’s fur. Dumb thing is just purring happily away, lying fat and lax in Amber’s grasp, utterly unaware that everyone else has been having a shitty week for the books, utterly unaware of their terror surrounding who is currently not in Amber’s arms. 

Rick looks at Negan. Negan tries not to look Rick in the eye, but while also keeping the man in his peripheral vision as he walks among his people. He trades a few soft words with Simon, whose eyes reflect his worry right back at him. He takes Frankie’s hand for a moment and squeezes it. He clasps Sherry by the shoulder. Rick watches. 

It’s not like anything he does helps much when Michonne comes back out of the warehouse with Amber and Mark’s son crying in her arms, her face unreadable. 

Rick’s body goes hard in an instant. 

Negan thinks he’s been following things well enough that he knows what comes next on the script. 

He looks at the drawn lines of Rick’s face, and wonders fuzzily as a rush of panic hits him who’s gonna die as punishment this time. He thinks, a moment later: _we could stop them. We outnumber them._

But they’re holding Amber’s son. 

There isn’t actually _shit_ he or anyone else can do. Rick’s people can do whatever they want to punish this particular disobedience. 

He can see the same realization painted on Amber and Mark’s faces, as Mark staggers a step forward toward Michonne, and then stops, stock-still, just an instant later. The next thought that flashes into Negan’s head is too horrible to even acknowledge. _They wouldn't hurt a baby,_ he thinks dully. 

He's right: Michonne’s holding the baby gently, as though she’s had practice doing it. And when she sees the abject horror on Amber and Mark’s faces, she freezes. 

Then her face just _crumples_. 

In an instant, Amber is dropping the cat unceremoniously and rushing up to Michonne, and Michonne is putting the child back in her arms, and Amber is sobbing. No one’s _doing_ anything except watching as Michonne puts her hand on Amber’s arm and says, “You didn’t need to worry,” her voice reassuring even if it is not at all steady. Amber clutches her baby tight in her arms, but doesn’t move away from Michonne’s touch, and a moment later, she’s speaking softly to Michonne in words none of them can hear. Michonne is nodding along, her own eyes shining with tears. 

Rick’s standing right by Negan, now. No one wants to stand near the guy who split Dwight’s head in two, not when they can cluster around the sweet, heartwarming shit that’s currently going on. Everyone else has moved away from the two of them thoughtlessly, like oil separating out from water by the passive and thoughtless tick of innate chemical interactions. Only Negan has the guts to stand next to Rick. Only Negan _has_ to do it, _has_ to watch as Rick remains unmoved by the scene in front of them. 

Negan looks up. He doesn’t know what to say. That doesn’t stop him: “Fucking shit. Listen, they were scared. Don’t do anything, and I swear, it won’t happen again --” 

He doesn’t quite make it as far as saying, _please_. The fact that he feels like he has to beg Rick for mercy in this particular situation is downright stomach-turning, but Rick cuts him off. He sounds… furious, as he locks eyes with Negan, his face shedding the blank mask he was wearing just moments before. “Stop it. We’re not gonna _do anything_. He’s a baby. Christ. We ain’t like that, I told you. If we’d wanted you all dead, it’d already be done.” 

It’s not difficult to read the emotions from Rick’s face. His jaw is clenched, his brow furrowed, his face a shade darker with a flush of color. Conflict, and tension and a biting anger. Negan’s pretty sure the expression is meant to be read as something stern or angry, but that’s not all there is. Beyond that, there’s a certain element of righteousness, a certain… sadness, almost. 

Rick is genuinely upset, Negan realizes. Rick is angered by what Negan thought he might do, what _everyone_ thought he might do. 

After a moment, Rick speaks again. His voice is low enough his words must be meant for Negan alone, and uncertain. “I have a baby girl” he breathes. “Her name’s Judith. Not much older than that one there. ” 

Negan is silent, for once, utterly dumbfounded by this information. 

Then Rick cocks his head and is looking at Negan again, inscrutable once more. “I think we need to get to know each other a little better, Negan,” he says, low and steady. He puts a hand on Negan’s shoulder, incredibly deliberately, like they’re friends, and Negan has to force himself not to jerk away from the contact. “I think, you should show me around town.” 

And there it is, he knew it was coming: there’s his punishment. Tailored extra-special just for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have *almost* nothing pre-written for this, but pinkie-promise, next chapter will feature some Rick, b/c he really got the short end of the stick this chapter


	4. In Backcountry

Rick lays his hand on Negan’s shoulder. 

It’s the most benign form of physical contact possible. There’s nothing threatening about it -- he’s very careful about that. He’s not standing too close, he’s not invading Negan’s space in any way whatsoever. He just rests his hand on Negan’s shoulder for a moment, like they’re friends. That’s all this says: _this is friendly._

____

He feels Negan tense in an instant. Sees the split-second look of panic in his eyes, and the poorly-concealed flash horror that follows when Rick tells him how he’d like them to go on a run together. 

____

Maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. Rick’s already _decided_ that they’ll go on a run together, during some time in the near future. But Negan’s reaction to him is incredibly frustrating. Negan should be thankful there’s someone like Rick around to keep him and the rest of his people from _starving _due to his own _incompetence _. And, beyond that, it’s frustrating what Negan obviously thinks he’s capable of.____

_______ _ _ _

He’s not a monster. None of them are. And it turns his stomach, thinking someone, _anyone _\-- even someone he dislikes as intensely as he is beginning to dislike Negan -- is afraid of him like that.__

_________ _ _ _ _ _

On the drive back to Terminus, he turns it over and over in his mind, and decides he’s gonna show Negan he’s better than all that. Beyond scouting the local area, they’re gonna get to know each other. He’s gonna make Negan understand that they can work together productively. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

It’s not like the Saviors are much of a threat now. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

Loaded up in the back of their trucks is most of the Savior’s weaponry, and there was a lot of it to be had. Now, for the price of some spare produce and eggs, it’s all his. Sure, he’s left them some guns. He’s not completely unreasonable. But he’s taken their automatics, their assault rifles, and anything which is intended to mow down a great deal of people in a short amount of time. He’s got a goddamn grenade launcher now. Negan’s people are now not only outnumbered, but out-gunned, and on the line with their stomachs.

_________ _ _ _ _ _

Rick’s not worried.

_________ _ _ _ _ _

Sure, the guy who pointed a gun at Carl, the guy who killed Sasha? It’s unlikely he’s ever gonna be on the top of Rick’s list of favorite people. But it also gets under his skin, the way Negan looks at him. Like he’s some deadly creature which got into his home, like he’s some abstract horror intruding upon Negan’s life instead of another living, breathing human being. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

Not to mention: a human being who just dropped off a week’s worth of food at his doorstep. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

It’s… frustrating.

_________ _ _ _ _ _

\-- 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

A week goes, and something ain’t right. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

It’s not just the change in season, even if that doesn’t feel quite right, either. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

In the past, the coming of summer had always seemed to promise something to Rick, like the whole world was breathing in with anticipation. The whole of June seemed to occur in a rushing, electric upswing toward high summer, and he’d watch as each day seemed to turn the Georgia sky a brighter shade of jewel-tone blue, and the sun would shine brighter and longer each day. Back before all this, Carl would get out of school for the summer, and he’d mow the lawn on the weekends, and Lori’s skin would break out in freckles from the afternoons they spent together out in the sun. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

Even back at the prison, during the one precious summer they’d spent there, things had felt… wholesome, and alive, in a way which they haven’t felt since. Some days went by at the prison where nothing happened, at all. It had been a blessing. On days like that, Rick had been able to forget entirely about the snarling of the walkers at the fence. On days like that, the whole world had seemed to shrink down to the safe expanse within their gates, and the tension he’d carried with him since this all started had bled right out of him. Their gardens had bloomed in spring and borne fruit, and the heat of summer had seemed to burn the madness Lori’s death had brought on right back out of him. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

But nothing feels like that now. Not since the prison fell, and especially not since Gareth. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

Everything in Terminus runs like clockwork. It’s a relentless and arcless _tick, tick, tick,_ which doesn’t seem to be leading up to anything in particular. They are safe, yet they are static. May bleeds into June, and the gardens produce, and the afternoon storms now dump down regular rains which turn the grasses tall and the forests almost impossibly thick and overgrown with dull foliage, and everything feels stagnant. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

The temperature rises fast, and the sudden burst of heat drives algae blooms which coat the bottoms of the nearby creeks and ponds, and leaves brown-green filmy growth on the surface of any still body of water. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

Between the patrols of the nearby area, and the long hours he spends in their guard tower, Rick feels as though he sees it all. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

He’s insisted, since Negan, that they keep an elevated watch. It’s a task which he does his best to shoulder the worst of, both out of an ever-present paranoia, and out of lingering guilt about asking his people to add extra hours on watch duty. Not that there’s any lack of people at Terminus who could stand watch -- the signs promising sanctuary leads people to them quasi-regularly -- but the people who Rick actually trusts to do so remain limited. 

_________ _ _ _ _ _

Michonne laughs at him, for the hours he spends stationed on watch. They’ve got a couple of pairs of walkie-talkies working, and she’ll buzz him every hour or so, mostly just to poke fun. _Still frying your brains up in the sun? How’s our mad guard dog doing this afternoon? _she’ll ask him lightly, but he knows she’s worried by his vigilance. Not worried for the danger of the outside world, like she should be, but worried for _him_. __

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It doesn’t stop him, even if it raises a burst of guilt in his chest each time she radios up to him. He can’t stop, because no amount of gentle teasing will stop the nervous gnawing in his gut, or the echoing reminder in his mind that just won’t quit. The one which reminds him that he was sleeping while Negan’s people almost ruined everything he’s been trying to build. The one which tells him, _you were sleeping, when he could have killed your son._

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s on one long summer afternoon, hazy and slow and broiling hot, that Rick sees it first: a barely-visible pillar of smoke, barely visible on the horizon. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

At first, he thinks it could just be the haze of the afternoon turning into heat shimmer in the distance. He thinks it could just be his overtired eyes, playing tricks on him. But inspection through the pair of beat-up binoculars Michonne turned up a few weeks back only clarifies the image of white-gray smoke, rising from what must be a campfire. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He radios down to the guard shack. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“Hey, Carol. You might wanna come up and take a look at this.” 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s the first evidence they’ve seen of other people in weeks, Negan’s people aside. It’s comforting, he thinks, on some level, knowing that other people are out there. He thinks they’ll likely be opening their gates to newcomers soon. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

But another part of him, a part which is much more exhausted and paranoid also thinks: there’s no reason he and Carol can’t go get eyes on them before they arrive. Michhone’s better with Negan’s people than he is, anyway. There’s no reason she and Daryl can’t go over there on their own tomorrow, and he can deal with things here. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

\-- 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The weather recently has been so disgustingly hot that no one wants to go on runs. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Each afternoon, the temperature soars into what must be over a hundred degrees, and the humidity soars up to meet it, until the mere act of stepping out of their partially air-conditioned warehouse and into the outside world is enough to make it feel like you’re downright swimming in your own sweat. No one wants to go out in it, especially not when they’ve just had a bunch of food dumped at their doorstep -- and way better food than they could possibly hope to scavenge for themselves, at that. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Nobody, that is, except Negan. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Negan starts taking an awful lot of solo runs. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He justifies it to himself. He’s losing his goddamn mind, sitting around like this, triple-digit weather be damned. And beyond that, Rick’s been letting him off the hook, for weeks on end. Turns out, it’s a million times worse to exist with that hanging over his head than just getting it over would be. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He downright simmers with it, dreading each arrival of Rick’s group, waiting for Rick to nab him up and drive off with him for their promised little get-to-know-you session. But at the next few drop-offs, there’s no evidence of Alexandria’s fearless leader. His absence, too, remains unexplained. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s troubling. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Negan even finds himself dreaming about Rick, he thinks about it so much. The dreams -- they’re not even that bad, not like he would expect them to be. Nothing ever really happens. It’s just a never-ending series of nonsensical adaptations on various petty fears of his, except that Rick is always there, and always watching him as he fumbles and struggles. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s stupid, going on runs by himself, but it ain’t like anyone’s gonna stop him. And he justifies it: he has to blow off steam. He tells himself, he’s a man of simple needs. He just needs to work this all out by bashing in some dead skulls with Lucille, and then he’ll sleep better at night. No one else has to be there to see it. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He’ll be fine out there. Negan’s never met anything he couldn’t handle. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

\-- 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Carol makes eerily little noise, as she moves through the woods. Rick’s never understood how she’s so quiet. Dressed in dark colors, and with mud smeared on her cheeks, she seems practically invisible. Walking a few feet behind her, and with his eyes always at her back, he feels as though he’s an absolutely graceless, trampling beast of a man, and he’s sure if she wasn’t letting him follow behind her, he’d lose her to the thick greenery in minutes. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

They barely talk, when they’re out together like this, and that’s exactly how they both like it. It’s an unspoken agreement between them, one which never needed words to be settled on. They both understand completely that you can’t let your guard down out here, not for an instant, and they both understand that there ain’t much that needs to be said so badly it’s worth attracting the undead -- or puncturing the rare and precious silence. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

They still play CDs in the car, though. They trade off, one for one -- half folk, half country. Carol smiles whenever she sees Rick’s fingers tapping along to the music on the steering wheel, wide an unabashed. Like he can’t see her grinning at him. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

There’s no way Rick likes to do runs better: knowing he’s in good hands with Carol, and knowing that Terminus is safely in Michonne's capable hands in his absence. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

They’ve been at this for weeks. One trip turned into two, and Michonne told him he was being paranoid. When two trips turned into three, he told Michonne and Daryl they were following a lead on a stash of antibiotics instead of continuing their hunt, and begrudgingly let them take Carl along with them on the trip to deliver Negan’s supplies. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Truth is, he felt safer sending Carl with them than leaving him at Terminus. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Thing is, they’ve been _seeing_ stuff. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Smoke, spotted from the watchtower, cropping up in different places every few days, like whoever is sending up the smoke is moving rapidly about the surrounding area.

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Paths, where the underbrush has been parted with evident violence, in a way which could only be achieved using a machete or some other weapon and some considerable force. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The animal they saw -- big eyes reflected glinting and red in their headlights, there for a moment and then gone just as fast -- which Carol swears was too well-groomed to be a stray dog. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

So they keep looking, their shared tension growing with each trip until it breeds between then something electric and mutative, which seems to turn the unseen, unknown threat into something multitudes bigger than a few other survivors. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Today, they’ve plotted out the location of the latest smoke column, and have driven out to a few miles of its origin. It was coming from somewhere deep in the backcountry, on what must have been county land. There are no houses beyond a few abandoned squatters shacks and trailers situated off little dirt roads, and the only regular sign of prior human habitation is fading signs that warn them back from trespassing. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

They’ve been picking through the surrounding woods for hours, and thus far, have found little sign of life. There's barely even a walker, or a game animal, or a bird in the sky. There’s nothing but the dense woods, going on forever. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Nothing punctures the silence: not birdsong, not crickets. Nothing but the sound of his own footfalls, which seem disproportionately loud to his ears. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

But now, from in front of him: Carol raises her hand, signaling him to stop. She’s almost a yard ahead of him, but they both freeze within instants of each other. It’s so quiet for a moment that he swears he can hear his own heart pounding. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

A moment later, Carol raises her gun and shoots. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

His ears ring. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

His every fear flashing before his eyes, he rushes forward. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

\-- 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Alone in the woods, everything gets so silent. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Negan’s been driving far off from their compound regularly, to the most remote and backwoods parts of Georgia they have drawn up on the map. He trudges from out-of-the-way town to out-of-the-way town, scavenging from places which were never much to begin with, in the off-chance of finding some rock left unturned, or some medicine cabinet or pantry not already stripped dry. He visits empty truck stops and trailer parks, and breaks into run-down coves of houses off overgrown dirt roads. He goes anywhere they haven’t already looked over twice. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s stupid work. It’s frustrating work. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

But he’s alone. Blissfully, wonderfully alone, in a way he never is at the warehouse. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

This particular day, he’s making the trek out to an out-of-the-way trailer park, deep in the overgrown woods. The road there is marked on the map, but he had to ditch his car almost as soon as the pavement gave way to packed dirt, where a flooded-out creekbed has turned the orange clay into a sticky wet mess, impossible to pass except by foot. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s so hot he opts with reluctance to leave his customary leather jacket in the car, and roll up the bottoms of his jeans. He locks Lucille safely in the trunk, opting to carry a hunting rifle and a machete at his belt, and keep his hands free. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Once he’s through the mud, there’s not much to do but walk, listen to the squelch of the standing water in his soaked-through boots, and sweat slowly through his remaining clothes.

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He knows he’s gonna miss the protective layer of his jacket once he has to go off the main road. Outside of a few downed branches, the road he’s on now is pretty clear, but it’s been narrowed with the ingrowth from the woods on either side. This is so thickly choked with bramble that it’s almost impassable, and although it deters walkers from doing much except stumbling halfheartedly along after him on the trail, it also means getting himself through it is going to be a pain.

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It gets quiet, out here, but in that quiet? Everything gets way too clear. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He hardly makes a sound as he walks alone through the forest. He skates crisp leaves and ever-so-snappable branches, so that the walkers, when they pass him at a distance, hardly notice him at all, and he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt how useless it all is. How useless _he_ is. Even if he gets lucky, and manages to bust into some pillhead's secret store of opioids, or shoots down a deer to carry back with him, they’re still trapped in their current situation. Rick still has their guns. Rick still delivers their goods. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

And really? If he’s being fucking honest? No one but him, and maybe Sherry, even gives a shit. They’re all happy to be kept well-fed, and Negan imagines they were sick of feeling like they were alone in this hellscape of a world. They like Rick’s people, even if they don’t like Rick himself. They downright eat up his samurai second-in-command, ever since the little display with Amber’s baby. And Rick’s son -- Rick’s _son_ , who Negan almost _shot_ \-- comes along sometimes. That’s how secure Rick feels in the whole thing: he lets his son come to visit like he’s going on a cute little playdate. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Outside of Negan and Sherry, everyone’s forgetting what happened. The moment Negan thinks it, he knows it to be true. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Finally, he reaches the point where the road turns off toward the trailer park. He and Dwight had driven past it, in the winter of last year, and seen the dilapidated trailers through the bare trees. At the time, they'd decided it was too much trouble to get to, situated at the bottom of a rocky slope, with the down road long-overgrown. Even alone, and armed with a machete to clear the brush, it’s going to be difficult going. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

There, at the edge of the overgrown path, he hesitates. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He’s been feeling it, all morning long. A weight behind his eyes, and a scratching in his throat. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s been trying to boil over for days, with the same ferocity with which he forces it away. It was there when he dug a grave for Dwight, but then, it wasn’t his place to cry. It was there when he told his people he’d cooperate with Rick, and it was there when hunger first drove him to crack open a can of the food Rick’s people had brought them. It’s there when hours simmer past each night, and he can’t sleep for the life of him, and he lies awake in frustration and watches as the sky starts to lighten up with the dark. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Just fucking figures this is where he’d find himself when all those bottled-up feelings finally got the jump on him: he's all by himself in the middle of all hell-fuck nowhere, and he’s finding himself doing his damnedest to hold back burning, frustrated tears. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s not like anyone is there to see him. That’s kinda the point of this whole series of expeditions. It’s just dangerous. Getting turned into a walker’s breakfast because he was busy having his own personal waterworks display is a stupid way to go. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

There’s still a ways to go before he gets to his destination: a slope down to a clearing, rocky and overgrown. So he moves forward. He slashes back the underbrush with what must be…considerably more force than is strictly necessary, feeling the motion all the way through his body. He grits his teeth, and imagines that each swing of his arms is a punch, and that they're landing one after the other on Rick Grime’s immaculate face until his blue eyes are bruised in their sockets, and his nose is broken in two right down the center. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_That_ makes him feel better. Way, _way_ better. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He’s a man of simple needs, he tells himself, when he reaches the bottom of the hill and bursts forth into the cove of houses. His chest heaves from the exertion, and that feels good, too.

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_Time to turn up some goodies_ , he thinks to himself. _Fuck Rick Grimes_. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

\-- 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Carol shoots, and they’re both rushing forward an instant later. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Rick’s long strides put him at Carol’s back, his own gun raised, and they burst forward into the upcoming clearing together. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

At the same instant, two walkers come out of the woods across from them, moving at a striking speed. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Fresh walkers, Rick realizes. Their clothes are clean, and they’re moving fast, and horrifyingly like the living. They’re on Carol in an instant, and she’s caught off-guard, her hand still reaching for her knife as their hands reach out to grab at her. She kicks one off, swinging forward and shoving her hands against the other’s chest, but it’s strong -- a burly, huge man, almost twice Carol’s size. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He’ll overpower her in an instant longer. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Rick doesn’t hesitate. He _can’t_ hesitate. He takes a step back, and breathes out, then fires over Carol’s shoulder, one shot, and then another. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He can’t afford to miss, and he doesn’t. His bullets connect in two clean headshots, and the walkers go down at Carol’s feet as she reels back away from them, their hands reaching forward as their bodies collapse to the ground at her feet. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Carol doesn’t even flinch. Neither Rick or Carol dares breathe, for an instant. She whirls around, and he faces forward, waiting, but no more come. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Rick breaks the silence. “You _okay_? He get you?” 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Carol shakes her head. “Looks like they were comin’ for something else.” 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

She’s right: there’s a body in the clearing. The remains of a body, that is. Unmistakably human, not a walker, but already nearly devoured. The first walker Carol shot is collapsed on top of it, and smeared all across with the off-purple blood of the recently deceased. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Carol’s already turning over the two walkers Rick shot and examining them with an almost clinical ease. “Knife wounds,” she says softly. “Maybe a day ago. Looks like there was a fight. Someone killed them and didn’t put them down. Or they ran away, bled out, and turned, maybe.”

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

They both see the ashes from the campfire, and the trampled grass around the clearing, and Rick knows with a feeling that bleeds dread into the marrow of his bones that he and Carol were right: someone’s out here. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Rick nudges one of the bodies with his foot. “Well, I guess we hope this was the last of ‘em, then, huh?” 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He doesn’t believe it himself. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

\--

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Negan’s been due for some luck. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He strikes out, the first few places he hits, and that’s what he’s expecting. The trailer park is only a dozen homes, all together. He’s willing to bet that a few of them were abandoned to start with, and even those which clearly were inhabited are mildewy, rotting, and packed full of junk. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The third place he goes into looks a little better. It’s clean, even if the front windows are halfway busted, and have clearly been letting in the elements for some time. The front wall is completely grown over with black mold and mildew, and the reek of rot is conspicuous in the air, but Negan pulls his shirt over his nose, and heads into the house anyway. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He checks through the kitchen, and finds nothing. Same with the medicine cabinet, and the dressers. He checks the drawers of the bedside table in the only bedroom, and finds only a dog-eared bible, and plastic rosaries. These make him feel a twinge guilty, but not guilty enough that he doesn’t roll open the bottom drawer, too, hoping to turn up some lube or a forgotten titty mag. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

There’s nothing but dust. Typical. The reek of mold is making his throat burn. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

On the way out, he pauses by the front wall. There’s a set of drawers by the busted window, covered in long-dead houseplants, the wood expanded and swollen with the prolonged exposure to rain from the outside. In a few of the pots, mushrooms and weeds have managed to spring up in place of their less-hardy relatives. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

On impulse, Negan yanks at the top drawer. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s jammed shut. The wood’s too expanded. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He pulls harder. The wooden handle comes off in his hand, and the drawer bursts open, and with it, he’s greeted by a miracle. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s someone’s pill drawer. Completely untouched. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He pulls the bottles out, one by one, wonderingly. It’s supplements, for the most part, some of which are so obscure that he’s never even heard of them, strange hippie mood-boosting bullshit. But mixed in with them, there’s also the vitamins, ibuprofen, and aspirin he knows his people desperately need... and a host of prescription-orange bottles, which his eyes light on last, crammed together on one side. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Slinging his backpack off from his shoulder, he starts to pick them out, one by one, overwhelmed. They’re good stuff. Stuff he recognizes. Muscle relaxers, pain medication, and sleeping pills. He shakes the bottles, one by one, hardly believing his own luck when the sound of rattling pills greets his ears. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

And, _fuck_. It’s too much. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s too much, and not enough, all bundled into one, and he can’t handle it. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Gratitude without aim or direction grips him, and for a moment he feels as though he should drop to his knees and thank God, and that gratitude is tangled up in a million other things that aren’t positive at all, and it’s such a strong and violent feeling that his eyes fill with tears in an instant. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Everything that he was holding back earlier just rushes to the surface, and an instant later, he’s collapsing to the musty carpet floor, his back to the dresser, and giving in and crying pathetically. One hand goes up reflexively, clamping over his mouth in a death grip to muffle the sound, the other grasping protectively across the stash in his backpack. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The sound of rain breaks out across the roof, heavy and sudden. It falls through the open window and splashes against his back, and against the potted plants on top of the dresser, and it feels… appropriate, because as soon as he gets started crying, he just can’t stop. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He tries anyway: he thinks of Lucille. He thinks about how, if she were here, she’d tell him to stop it, to pull himself together. He can almost hear her voice, imploring him: _for God’s sake, Negan, stop it._. There'd be no real vitriol, there never had been. She just always hated seeing him cry, right to the end. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Thinking about her is a mistake. It only makes him more hysterical. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

\-- 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It muddies his thoughts. That’s what he tells himself. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

By the time he’s cried himself out, he’s managed to attract a little company: a walker, the only one he’s seen all day long, reaching in through the broken glass of the front window in pursuit of him. It’s slow and useless. Unable to get itself through the window panes, it shuffles furtively against the front wall, all while cutting up the rotting flesh of its long-dead arms on the sharp panes of the glass. It’s the smell of the thing, not fear for his own safety, which drives Negan back into the outside world. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

While he was inside, it rained a fuck-ton. By the time he finally leaves the town, the combination of the absurd heat of the sun radiating down on the earth, followed by the sudden addition of a warm rain has left the very ground steaming, and the air disgustingly hazy and humid. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He ain’t thinking. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He’s walking back to the road, up the hill, and everything is muddy, both literally and figuratively. His mind is all muddied up, and the ground he walks on, too, is slick with mud. He slides and slips gracelessly up toward the road, up an incline which did not seem anywhere near this steep while he was on his way down. He’s struggling, his feet slipping and sliding under him, grasping at the trunks of saplings to steady himself as he drags himself up the hill. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

All he’s thinking is getting the medicine he’s carry back to his people, as soon as possible. All he’s thinking about is seeing the looks on their faces. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It comes out of nowhere. A flash of gray, moving through the wood at an alarming speed. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

His body reacts before he even knows what it is. His hands drop from their holds, and he pulls out his gun to shoot as the creature hurtles toward him. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’s a dog, he realizes, as his shot rings out. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Just a dog, he thinks, as the motion puts him off-balance, feet skidding under him. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

His shot rings out, but it doesn’t even come close to making contact, and the thing is still running at him. His body reacts instinctively, like it’s a walker coming at him, not some stray. Like if it gets any nearer to him, it’s going to reach forward and rip his skin right off, and that’ll be the end of it all. He throws himself forward as it runs past, and his feet slide in the mud —

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The dog runs right past him. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Negan wobbles, for a moment, before the whole of his balance gives out on him, and he’s tumbling down the hill, and the incline didn’t seem that steep when he was walking down it before, but it’s steep enough that the force of his movement drives him right through brambles and over rocks, his own struggling useless to stop his uncontrolled fall. He frantically puts out one arm, grasping for any kind of handhold to stop his own motion, and failing utterly. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Moments before he comes skidding to a halt, he feels a horrible slicing feeling down the length of his arms. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Then he’s half skidding to a stop, half running sideways into a tree. Pain explodes in his side, but it’s nothing. Doesn’t even register. Not when he can already see blood, running down his hand from a gash which spans the length of his forearm, from the edge of his wrist all the way up to his elbow.

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

He lies there for a moment, stunned and dizzy. When he raises his arm above his head to get a better look at the wound, blood splatters down onto his face. 

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

For a moment, he’s not even thinking about how tremendously not good this all is. He’s not thinking about stopping the bleeding, or even the pain burning up the length of his arm. For a moment, all he’s thinking is that, _damn, that dog looked well-groomed._

___________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait yall! i have been so swamped these past weeks 
> 
> hope you all enjoy and thank you for all your lovely comments <3


	5. Gettin' To Know

By the time Negan gets back, he’s _exhausted _.__

____

He does get back. It isn’t pretty, but he does it. He ruins a perfectly good white shirt in the process, staunching the bleeding from his arm, and comes down with the mother of all headaches, but he does do it. 

____

Objectively, he gets lucky: even though he has to stumble back to his car, woozy with the compounded effects of injury and heat, he still makes it back in one piece. In the trunk, there’s some legitimate bandages left in the first aid kit, and a change of clothes. 

____

He slides back into his jacket with a shudder of relief. Heat be damned. 

____

\-- 

____

It’s lucky that when he gets back into his car, he slides back into the leather jacket. 

____

When he gets back, and drives up to the gate of the compound, he’s got a nasty little surprise waiting for him. 

____

It’s Rick Grimes who unlocks the gate. 

____

Surely, Rick sees the mud caking Negan’s boots, and the exhausted slump of his shoulders, the instant Negan gets out of his car. Negan is certain he does. Rick’s eyes swiftly catalog every bit of Negan’s appearance, and he has to fight the urge to pull down the sleeve of his jacket out of fear the gash on his arm is showing; has to fight the urge to wrap his arms protectively around his shoulders as though that would somehow fend off Rick’s gaze. 

____

He doesn’t. He knows Rick would see that, too, and know exactly what it means. He wonders if Rick is cataloging the days-unshaven stubble on his chin, too, and the harsh contrast between his markedly pallid skin and the high points on his face where the early summer sun has burnt his skin to an angry red. Cataloging it all and adding it all up and tallying it in his mind until he knows -- what? Until he takes the sum of Negan? Until he derives the fucking truth of him? 

____

Rick nods to him. “Get in the truck,” he says. “You’re late. Food’s already delivered.” 

____

It’s midweek. It’s midweek, and already midday, and Rick shouldn’t be here, and he wants nothing more in this world than to crawl off to Frankie. He wants her to stitch up his arm and bitch at him for not being more careful. He wants a shower. He wants a sandwich. He wants to pop a few of those good pain pills he found, and curl up and sleep for the next ten years, and wake up when this is all over. 

____

“You’re early,” he says dumbly. “You shouldn’t be here ‘till Monday.” 

____

“Then you should be happy,” Rick says. “That’s more food for your people. Consider it a peace offering. We have more squash than we know what to do with, anyway.”

____

For a second, Rick’s voice seems almost conversational. Still, Negan can feel the weight of Rick’s gaze on him, and he forces himself to straighten his shoulders, to let his hands hang casually at his sides instead of cradling his injured arm the way he wants to. 

____

“Where are you coming from?” Rick says, then, and Negan realizes he’s made a huge, dumb mistake. 

____

The pills. They’re all still in his backpack, which is sitting, and hanging open in the passenger seat of the car. He follows Rick’s gaze there, as it alights on the bottles peeking out of the top of the backpack. 

____

“Looks like good stuff,” Rick says noncommittally. “How about you let me take a look?”

____

_Shitting fuck. Goddamn._

____

\-- 

____

There ain’t no words, as they sit in the RV. 

____

Rick drives, and Negan sits in the passenger seat in silence. He fiddles with the zipper at his wrist, and scratches at the jagged scar on the leather of his jacket running along his forearm — he can’t help the restless motion, even though he tries. 

____

_Clean that whole place out?_ Rick had asked him, after he’d pulled the bag of pills out of the backseat. _Where are you coming from? Got a map I could follow there?_

____

Rick watches him. He can feel Rick watching him, so much so that he wants to snap at the other man to keep his eyes on the road. They’re both gonna wind up as snacks for walkers if they run off the road because fucking Rick’s too busy watching Negan squirm, or eyeing up the map of the potential supply run locations Negan had reluctantly forked over, one hand on the wheel. 

____

Rick pulls a stick of gum out of its package and pops it in his mouth, and _there it goes again_ : Rick’s blue eyes, raking his face up and down, not the least bit subtle. 

____

The wheels on the passenger side are running along the faded yellow line at the edge of the lane, barely staying within the limit of the road. Negan watches out the window intently, even as he feels Rick’s eyes on him like fire. The air smells slightly of artificial mint. It’s been so long since Negan had a piece of gum that the smell seems alien. 

____

Silence never did come naturally to him. 

____

Even here, even now, sitting in the passenger seat of Rick’s truck, after watching the other man pack up and send away a generous half of the medicine he brought back, he can’t turn it off. He wants to say _something_ , anything whatsoever to fill the silence, even though Rick’s currently orchestrating the worst possible version of his day. Even though Rick makes him so angry he can hardly see straight. 

____

_Ask him what he did for a living, before the shit hit the fan_ , his mind supplies. _Ask him how his kick-ass little kids are. Tell him he can’t drive for shit. Hell, tell him about that weird-ass dog you saw._

____

He has to plead with himself to keep his big, dumb mouth shut. He reminds himself of the feeling of Rick’s knuckles, stinging on his cheek, the night they met. _Speak when you’re spoken to_ , Rick had said, and now Negan repeats these words to himself, over and over to himself like a mantra. 

____

They sting, even weeks later. 

____

“You’re awful quiet,” Rick says. “Ain’t we supposed to be gettin’ to know each other?” 

____

“Eyes on the road, cowboy,” Negan shoots back reflexively, and not entirely kindly. 

____

_Speak when you’re spoken to_. The meaning shifts now, menacingly: maybe he should be talking. Worse, maybe he’s obliged to. Maybe Rick’s been sitting there, this whole time, waiting for him to speak. 

____

He’s not gonna make things worse. That’s the goal of any interaction with Rick, he’s decided, and especially this one: _just don’t fuck it up worse._ He digs a nail into the rip in the leather and tears inward. Underneath the jacket, his arm throbs incessantly, and he hopes it’s not still bleeding under the thick layer of bandages. 

____

“Okay. Gettin’ to know each other, huh? What’s there to know about you, Rick? Two kids and the apocalypse version of a white picket fence?” 

____

He looks over at Rick, when he says that, looking for any hint of animosity in the other man’s face, and is surprised not to find any. Rather, Rick is smiling, just a little. “Yeah. Something’ like that. Some kind of something like that,” he says. “What’s there to know about _you_ , Negan?” 

____

Rick doesn’t look like he wants to kill him in cold blood. That’s new, and also encouraging. “That I don’t think you can drive for _shit?_ ” Negan tries halfheartedly. 

____

Rick chuckles. “I’ll get us there in one piece. Don’t you already have enough to worry about?” 

____

“Well, shit, You ain’t wrong.” 

____

They lapse into relative silence, after that. Negan tosses out another half-hearted complaint about Rick’s driving a few minutes later, and the expression on Rick’s face remains relaxed -- almost self-satisfied. 

____

The afternoon light is highlighting the gold in Rick’s dark brown hair, and the silver in his beard. If Rick was keeping his eyes on the road, Negan wouldn’t be able to see the sky-blue flashes of his irises, but Rick’s not. Rick’s taking each bump in the road sight-unseen, and so fast that it jolts Negan out of his seat, the top of his head almost hitting the roof of the truck. 

____

Rick’s staring at Negan, one hand scratching absently at his cheek, his brow minutely furrowed. 

____

There ain’t no sunscreen left on this earth which will keep Negan from burning in the noonday sun. He rubs the bridge of his nose, and the skin peels back against his hand. His face feels hot like he’s coming down with a low-grade fever. 

____

It’s like the world’s longest, shittiest déjà vu. 

____

Rick’s truck still has four-wheel drive, which crosses the flooded-out creek which had driven Negan to get out and go forward on foot with ease. It makes the whole trip shorter by at least an hour -- what took Negan ages to trek through on foot, Rick drives through with abandon in about ten minutes, doing nothing to slow down as they speed over muddy potholes and bumps on the unpaved road. 

____

Mud flies up off the road and splatters the lower half of the windows a Mars-like red. 

____

They park the car near where Negan cut a path down the hill. Rick takes his ax, and holsters a handgun. Negan doesn’t even bother to ask if he’s allowed a weapon. Lucille’s still in the trunk of his car, and there’s a field knife with a molded orange handle shoved down inside one of his boots, barely big enough to take a walker out with. That’s it. 

____

Rick’s not having it. “I’m not having you out here unarmed,” he says, scowling at Negan’s empty hands. “There are a few things in the back of the truck. Take whatever suits you.” 

____

When Negan looks at him in disbelief: “What? You’re not gonna do anything. Might as well make yourself useful.” 

____

He takes a crowbar. It’s rusted at the base, but solid. As much as he resents how comfortable Rick is around him, the weight of it in his grip is still reassuring. 

____

A moment later, Rick tosses him a battered water bottle from the back of the truck. “You look like shit,” he says pleasantly -- unconcernedly -- and sets off down the hill without waiting to see if Negan will follow behind him.

____

Negan stands there for a moment, as Rick sets off down the hill -- jaw clenched, throat dry. Then he swallows his pride. He drains the bottle and follows behind Rick at a distance. 

____

— 

____

They arrive to a shitshow. 

____

While he was gone, the walker at the window of the trailer where he found the meds-- arms still reaching in desperately, slashed on the broken glass, reeking of rot -- has gotten trapped, and attracted some company. There’s a small crowd of the dead, now gathered about the window of the trailer, and loosely milling around in the road.

____

It’s too many walkers to be worth their while. Not for this dumpy little trailer park and the three trailers he left untouched. But Rick -- _the absolute maniac_ \-- is getting his hatchet off his belt the instant they see them. “Follow my lead,” he breathes into Negan’s ear, and before Negan has time for so much as a _what-the-shit_ , he’s hurtling into the clearing at the center of the trailer park. 

____

“Hey!” Rick shouts to the walkers. “ _Over here!_ ” 

____

Then he’s in motion: he charges into the crowd without a moment’s pause, swinging the ax in a high arc above his head. 

____

One walker goes down, Rick’s ax splitting its skull, then two, and then Rick’s surrounded by them. 

____

“Oh, fucking shit!” Negan’s reflexes take over. He’s behind Rick an instant later, as the opening Rick’s initial blows plowed open in the pack of walkers disappears, and they close in on either side of them. “You _crazy bastard!_ ” Negan yells, swinging the crowbar in a long arc to keep them back. “Following your lead looks like _this?_ ” 

____

“ _Shut up_ , and stay on my back!” 

____

Negan doesn’t really have any other option at this point. He reaches blindly for Rick and yanks him closer by the back of his shirt. 

____

For a moment, they’re completely united -- one flesh, one body, one moving object of complete destruction. Their bodies fit together perfectly, jammed into each other, pressed back to back. Negan swings the crowbar with an untempered fury, and each blow makes contact so hard that gore flies as he knocks out walkers, one after the other. Pressed against his back, he can feel each swing of Rick’s hatchet swing, moving with such force that surely nothing but the mass of own Negan’s body is keeping Rick on his feet. Negan can _feel_ each blow and feel as he absorbs the shock. 

____

They fight well together. It’s over really fast, this way. 

____

Then they’re stumbling, both gasping for breath. Negan shoves the final walker off of him. Staggering forward, he kicks it to the ground, and slams his boot through its skull. 

____

_Crunch._ Grey matter, all over the heel of his boot. He drives his foot down once, then twice again for good measure, but it’s no use. The rush of that small act violence only holds him over for a second. 

____

His whole body is on fire. There’s no stopping. 

____

A moment later, he’s turning on Rick, too, not even pausing for breath. 

____

He turns around and swings a punch, clocking Rick right in the jaw -- 

____

And Rick goes _down_ , right down to the ground, in an instant. Like it’s the last thing on earth he was expecting. 

____

Rick goes down hard onto the overgrown grass, and Negan’s rushing at him a moment later. He’s moving to kick at Rick’s exposed belly, hard, but his feet slip out from under him on the rot-damp grass, and they’re tumbling into each other the next instant as his falling body collides with Rick’s rising one. Their arms scrabble uselessly at each other, trying to find skin to grab or anywhere with traction to hold onto, sliding on sweat and walker blood. 

____

“Were you _trying_ to get us killed?” Negan yells, and Rick’s on top of him. Rick’s grabbing at his clothes, and Negan’s half-aware Rick might be trying to hold him back instead of hurting him. He can’t stop, regardless. He’s swinging wildly up at Rick, his whole body screaming with a fury which he has no ability whatsoever to control, _screaming_ with a fury which demands to be expressed by blows. He doesn’t even think he’s _trying_ to hurt Rick. His would-be punches are frantic and useless. 

____

“ _Fuck you_ for what you did to my friends!” he’s screaming as Rick grapples with his shoulders, trying to hold him down as he rears up from the ground, and his fists finally start connecting. He lands blow after blow, his hands connecting with Rick’s nose, his jaw -- and, fuck, he _knows_ he can hit harder than this, but there’s nothing behind his punches, and they land practically without effect. His bad arm hurts like a bitch, and he’s sure it’s bleeding again. 

____

“Fuck you for what you did to Dwight, you fucking prick, I should kill you right here and right now for what you did to them!” he’s yelling, and Rick’s body is shaking on top of him. He’s screaming his voice hoarse, and he realizes a moment later that Rick is laughing. Rick is laughing right through the blood in his mouth. 

____

“You would never dare,” Rick chokes through his laughter. “You need me, _they_ need me. Your people need me, and they’re gonna love me, just like they love you. You’re the _only one_ who can’t see it.” 

____

And then, Rick’s got a grip on him. His fingers are digging into Negan’s shoulders, clutching painfully hard. Rick’s pinning his arms down and straddling across his hips to get a better angle. Fuck, Negan thinks, and closes his eyes. Lets his body go limp under Rick’s touch. 

____

Rick punches and punches the instant he’s got the leverage to do so, his blows leaving Negan breathless and smarting in pain as they graze his face and slap against his chest, but fuck, Rick isn’t even _trying_. If Rick was trying, Negan would already have a broken nose and a busted eye and be screaming in pain. 

____

No, Rick’s curling his hands into Negan’s hair a moment later, and yanking at his hair as he pulls Negan’s face off the ground. As if that will hurt him, somehow, as if the pain from that even fucking registers at this point. 

____

Rick’s straddling his hips and bending down, getting right up in Negan’s face. 

____

“What do you think you’re gonna accomplish here, exactly?” Rick asks him, and there isn’t even any vitriol in his voice. His breath is warm on Negan’s face, and smells surreally of menthol. “Beyond playing who’s-got-the-bigger-dick? Beyond knowing you’re a man because you threw a punch at me?” 

____

Negan doesn’t know. Negan’s seeing stars, his head’s swimming. He’s just… waiting, for Rick to do something. To punch him again. To punch him harder. To do _something_ , but Rick doesn’t do anything. 

____

For a moment, everything is still. Rick gasps. Negan doesn’t breathe at all. Rick’s body suddenly feels very hot, straddling his. 

____

And then Negan shoves him, not hard at all, but Rick still rolls off Negan like he’s made of paper. Like he’s not substantial at all. He doesn’t even try to get away from Negan. He just rolls off him, and then lies beside him, breathing hard, their shoulders practically touching like his lip wasn’t just split on Negan’s knuckles moments earlier. Like he isn’t the kind of person who should deliver retaliation in death for this kind of transgression. 

____

Negan’s breathing hard, too. His stomach rolls. His body isn’t sure if he’s about to get killed or about to fuck or neither. He rolls away from Rick, curling his body away from the other man. 

____

Even though Rick isn’t looking at him, he hears Rick laugh again, and none of it makes a lick of sense. He watches as Rick gets to his feet, stumbling a little, halfway to grinning. He toes Negan like he’s seeing if he’s alive. “You coming? C’mon, get up, I know I didn’t hurt you that bad.” 

____

Negan twists to look up at Rick from the ground. 

____

Earlier this day, he lost a lot of blood. Bled it right out onto the muddy slope of the hill they just came down. He’s dizzy and sick and his arm hurts, and it must be a hundred degrees out, and Rick is laughing like he thinks this is all in good fun.

____

He’s dizzy and sick and halfway to hard, absolutely _furious_ at himself, and Rick is looking at him again with that fire in his eyes. Negan’s fury turns on Rick an instant later. He twists his body to meet Rick’s gaze, inscrutable as ever from where he stands over Negan and Negan just lies there still. 

____

“Is this how you want me?” he spits, shoving his body upright with his hands, and hardly believing what he is saying.“In the dirt, like a fucking animal?” 

____

_“What?”_

____

Maybe if he follows through and says this, Rick will slash his throat out. 

____

Maybe if Rick slashes his throat out, he can finally get some goddamn rest. 

____

He rolls onto his back. Behind him, his hands dig into the soft clay dirt. “I fucking said, do you _want me_ , like this? Does this shit _get you off_ , Grimes? Make you fucking hard in your fucking pants? You gonna go home, and rub one out, thinkin’ about holding me down while you do it? If you weren’t such a goddamn good person, would you? Why don’t you just take what you want? You know I’m in no position to say no.” 

____

Rick evidently can’t look at him while he says this. The other man turns away, dragging a hand through his hair. “What is _wrong_ with you? Get up! I never wanted that!”

____

“Then what’s wrong with _you_ , asshole? Dragging me out here like this? Murdering my friend, right in front of me, splittin’ his head open just like those walkers back there? ” 

____

When Rick turns back to face him, he looks as exhausted and sick as Negan feels. He looks like he could throw up. “Come into the house,” he says quietly, almost a monotone. “You’re in no state. I’m not gonna drag you there, but it does neither of us any good bein’ out in the open.” 

____

Negan lies there for a long minute, after Rick is gone, looking straight forward and into the afternoon sun.

____

\--

They sit inside the house together in silence. 

Rick sits against the wall facing the door, knees bent, his hands resting on the tops of his knees. Negan lies on his back the musty couch on the opposite wall and stares at the moldering ceiling, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. His chest feels scratchy, and his eyes hurt. He thinks he might be allergic to all the mold. 

“You don’t give your left tit about scavenging, do you?” he grumbles at length. “Brought me out here for some reason other than that. I ain’t stupid.” 

“Yeah. An’ it couldn’t be going worse than this if I was trying,” Rick says bitterly. Now, he doesn’t look at Negan. He looks at his hands, hanging limp across his knees, his face all screwed up like he’s smelling something nasty. 

“Huh?” 

“Comin’ out here, trying to get to know you. Thought maybe, we might understand each other a little better. Only so many people left in this world now, y’know? It’s… stupid, to carry on like we’ve been. Should have known it’d be like this.” 

“You wanted to fuckin’, what? _Make peace with me_? Then why did you drag me out here in the middle of the goddamn day like this, right after I got back? Why do any of _this_?” Negan gestures wide to the room around them as though he’s sweeping up the whole of this incredible mess into the span of his arms. 

This seems to piss Rick off. “I don't _know_ , Negan. Why the hell were you _out scavenging alone_? Do you know how stupid that is?” 

__

His arm hurts. He feels like he’s gonna cry, again. "I don't _know_ , Rick," he parrots back, trying to put even the faintest hint of genuine anger into his voice. 

__

“Please” he says, moments later. “Please, Rick, let’s just… go back. Let's just got back.”

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry... it was... y'know, a whole month


	6. B-Grade Sutures

Rick was going to give Negan what he wanted. Really, he was gonna do it. He was going to cut his losses, swallow his pride, and drive them both back to the warehouse in what was sure to be an absolutely wildly thick silence. He’s man enough to admit failure, and with the telltale bruises from his and Negan’s fight developing on his face, this trip is certainly feeling like failure. 

It’s an elementary concept, he thinks. Something he remembers from long ago in high school: sunk cost fallacy. The more effort you put into something, the harder it is to let it go. 

Sunk cost. He’s knee-deep in it with Negan, now, but this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s a mistake he’s been making for weeks. That’s what the past few weeks have been, chasing ghosts with Carol in the woods. Sunk cost and wasted time. Whoever was out there is probably dead, by now, and in the meantime, he’s let the situation with Negan simmer over and out of control. 

But none of his decisions seem to be the right ones, these days. For all his trouble trying to fix things with Negan, all he’s got is a split lip and the beginnings of a nasty bruise on his cheekbone. 

He’s frustrated and sick with himself. Frustrated at Negan. 

Frustrated at himself, mostly, for making shit worse. 

He’s gonna give Negan what he wants, and drive them back to the warehouse, but as Negan gets up to leave, the sleeve of his jacket pulls up a bit, and Rick sees a flash of white bandages. A brown stain from old blood, and bleeding through that, the watery red of fresher blood. 

It hits him fast: it’s a hundred degrees out today, and Negan still hasn’t taken off the jacket. 

It’s dumb that he hadn’t noticed before. 

_Shit._

Rick thinks of how Negan looked, when he pulled up to the gate. At the slump of his shoulders and his red-rimmed eyes. He hadn’t thought much of it, at the time. Now, his mind jumps to the worst possible explanation. 

Before he has time to think about it all that hard, he’s beside Negan, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Hold up. Negan. What’s wrong with your arm?” 

Negan tries to jerk away from him. “It’s nothin’,” he says hoarsely. “Let’s get out of here.”

That’s a bad answer. It’s an answer Rick has heard before, for an awful lot of instances where the injury in question was absolutely not nothing. “Bullshit. You ain’t been using that arm right, all day. Let me see.” 

Negan is stock-still, one hand still on the door handle. “It’s _nothing_ , Rick. I took a spill earlier today. Let’s go, c’mon.” 

Rick’s seeing a billion versions of the same horrible visual: Negan’s arm, bitten to all hell, already red with infection. He’s thinking of exactly how screwed he is if Negan’s not around to curse and strut and peacock and boss around his people at the warehouse, and suddenly that becomes his job. He’s thinking about how just moving on and letting them all self-destruct with their own uselessness isn’t really an option now. Carl’s taken quite a liking to one of the girls there, Enid, and Michonne has taken quite a liking to all of them -- especially the cute redhead who’s always hanging around Negan. Everyone’s getting attached to the idea they aren’t the only people living in this hellscape. Even if Rick wanted to cut Negan’s people off, and leave the area, that wouldn’t go over well. 

Besides… much as he is loathed to admit it, the idea doesn’t sit well with him, either. 

“Take off that dumb fucking jacket,” he snaps. His fingers dig into Negan’s shoulder, and he feels as Negan winces. “Just let me see.” 

“I _took care of it_ ,” Negan says stubbornly, and through clenched teeth. “Drop it, Rick. It’s nothing.” 

“I’m not asking.” Rick lets a little bit of bite into his voice. His fingers dig into Negan’s shoulder hard enough to bruise. “I need to see you’re not bit.” 

Negan closes his eyes, for a second. Rick feels him sigh more than he hears it. 

Negan relents. 

Under his jacket, Negan’s white shirt is soaked through with sweat, and clinging obscenely to his body. He’s inked up like the inside of a bar bathroom stall, and under the bandages which encase his lower arm, there’s a messy gash which starts at his wrist and goes up almost as far as his elbow. It’s still bleeding a little, red trickling down Negan’s arm after Rick unwraps the bandages to inspect it. 

Bizarrely, all the anger seems to drain right out of Negan, once Rick sits down beside him on the couch and starts to examine him. Rick halfway expects him to flinch away from the touch, but he doesn’t. 

He is perfectly still.

It’s bizarre. Negan himself is bizarre: a never-ending pendulum swing of contradictory and violent emotions which move at such a dizzying speed that Rick can’t begin to keep up. Earlier, he was almost pleasant. Then, fifteen minutes later, he was taking swings at Rick. Now, his body slumps against the upholstery of the couch, and he lets Rick examine his arm without any resistance. 

The wound hangs open. It’s not even cleaned out, too messy with blood and dirt for Rick to be able to properly judge the depth or severity. “Some spill,” he says, whistling low. “Shouldn’t have been fightin’ with me, not with this. You’ll need stitches for sure.” 

“Fuck you, Rick,” Negan mutters. It’s not even particularly biting. “Hell are you gonna do about it?” 

Rick does what he can. 

There are some emergency medical supplies, in the truck, and potable water. In the medicine cabinet of the musty yellow trailer, he finds dental floss and alcohol. He has a lighter in his pocket, which serves to sterilize the sewing needle from their first aid kit. 

Negan shucks off his muddy boots, and sits down cross-legged on the bed in the single bedroom, watching quizzically as Rick gatherer his supplies, appearing wholly resigned to this particular turn of events, or, at a minimum, shocked into some kind of civility. “Thought you were a fuckin’ soldier or something before, not a doctor,” he says to Rick gruffly. “Some kind of Marine asshole, maybe.” 

“I was a cop,” Rick says, coming back in and laying out some musty towels on the bed. “Deputy Sheriff in a small town. Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to sew a suture when someone needs it.” 

The truth is, he’s profoundly relieved. Here, finally, is something he knows how to deal with. After a day in which absolutely nothing seemed to be working out as planned, it’s comforting: a real, concrete injury which he can make right. He can literally, physically fix something which is wrong. 

He comes and sits across from Negan, and they’re both muddy, and bloody and it gets absolutely everywhere on the dusty floral bedspread when Rick settles down across from Negan. It feels _okay_ , though. It’s the first thing all day that has. 

Negan sits and watches as Rick sterilizes and threads the needle, and offers up his arm for Rick to clean out in silence. Even exhausted and hurt, Negan’s dark amber eyes remain sharp as they watch him, and Rick knows in his gut there’s a million things going through Negan’s head right now which he’s not voicing. 

When Rick takes his arm and starts cleaning it out, it should feel clinical, but it doesn’t. It feels intimate, and that, in turn, feels invasive. After everything, part of him feels like he has no _right_ to be doing this. But the wound gapes open, and Negan still needs stitches regardless of what he feels, so Rick’s hands are steady. Even when he knows it must sting, Negan is entirely still. He moves as slowly and as gently as he can, his grip on Negan’s forearm so light that if Negan so much as flinched, it would jolt his hands off. 

The other man is sunburnt in a way Rick never gets: his cheeks and his nose and the tips of his ears are flushed red, in stark contrast to the way the rest of his skin is a worryingly chalky hue. He looks bad. Really, deeply bad, and Rick’s wondering how long Negan has looked this bad, and how he didn’t notice before. 

_Didn’t care, not didn’t notice_ , Rick reprimands himself with a rush of guilt. _Don’t lie to yourself._

“It was a dog,” Negan offers, voice low and charged with nervous energy as Rick lines up the two split sides of his skin, causing Rick to pause the moment before he sinks the needle into Negan’s skin. “Really well-groomed, well-fed looking motherfucker. I was going up that hill back there, and it just came right out of nowhere. Threw me right off balance. Thought it was a walker coming at me awful fast, and I just panicked. Fell halfway down the hill, and had the shit luck to catch something sharp on the way down. Really dumb shit, all around.” 

The moment before he realizes exactly how worrying this particular detail is, Rick manages to place Negan’s tone as one of embarrassment. Nothing more than that. He furrows his brow, hands hovering over Negan’s arm. 

“C’mon,” Negan says. “Go ahead, Rick, do your worst. I’m not gonna be a little bitch about it.” 

Rick expects to have to hold Negan’s arm in place, while he digs the needle into the other man’s flesh. It’s a painful process, and Rick’s been on both ends of it. His hands settle onto Negan’s arm before he starts, feeling Negan skin burning hot with injury under his palms. Turns out that’s unnecessary: Negan is still utterly still. He hears Negan’s breath hiss, when he starts in, and feels Negan’s arm shaking minutely under his hands, but that’s it. Beyond that, the other man is motionless, and when Rick glances up at him, he’s not even looking away. Rather, he’s watching intently as Rick works.

Rick knots off the first stitch and starts moving up the length of the wound. 

“Awful strange, isn’t it? Dog like that, all well-groomed and shit?” 

It’s absolutely wild to him that Negan’s still talking. Wild, because Negan’s arm is shaking under his hands with tension. It has to hurt. Reflexively, his own grip squeezes tighter, steadying Negan’s arm as he adds another stitch. Strange further still, because Negan relaxes enough against the gentle pressure of Rick’s grip that his arm stops shaking so badly. 

For a moment, it all feels okay. 

Rick gets in a few more stitches. 

Then there’s voices, outside the door. A couple of voices, loud. Male. 

A dog’s bark, like they summoned the creature right out of nothing just by invoking it. 

“Shit,” Negan says softly. 

Rick’s still got his hands on Negan’s arm, halfway through a stitch, the needle still hanging out of Negan’s skin. They both freeze. No time to think about it: neither of them is well-armed, and Negan’s in no condition for another fight. “Under the bed,” Rick hisses, and Negan complies without a moment’s hesitation. 

A moment later, Rick follows him -- in a burst of thought, he tosses up the comforter cover, hiding the freshness of the bloodstains on it, and grabs for the crowbar Negan’s left propped up against the wall. Then they've hidden away under the bed, able to hear the door swing open again from where they’re pressed against each other under the bed, breathing in dust and a sickening moldering smell from the carpet. 

_Fuck. God. It would be now, of all times. After all that time you spent looking, now is when they find you?_

Words filter down to them, only half-audible. For a minute, Rick allows himself to hope against hope. Maybe he was right. Maybe these are people like them, and, at a more opportune time, he can bring them into his community (maybe even Negan’s community) safely. 

As the sound of footfall hits them, and the jarring cadence of rough words begins to sound horrifyingly crass, Rick lets that thought go. Instead, he’s forced to take in the reality of the situation, his heart rate picking up to a frantic hammer with fear. They’re alone, exposed, and have no one but themselves to blame for how beat-up they are. He’s crammed together with Negan under the bed, but he isn’t finding himself wishing the space below the bed was bigger. Rather, he’s grateful for it. Negan’s body, pressed up against his own by nothing short of necessity feels…. warm, and grounding. 

Rick breathes slowly and carefully. Everything smells of mold. 

Beside him, Negan hardly seems to move. 

Muffled, from above: “Looks like this place’s been all torn through.” 

With his face pressed into the carpet, he can see the heavy boots which bring the others into the room. All men’s voices, he thinks, and all he sees are the muddy soles of thick boots on the pastel carpet. As they walk about the room, he thinks it is so silent he can almost hear his own heartbeat, almost hear Negan’s heartbeat. 

“Hell are those motherfuckers with the RV?” another voice says. 

Rick feels Negan wince beside him as rough hands pat down the bedding, as though someone might be under those thin sheets. He hears as drawers are ripped open, and the thin metal-on-metal sound from the rungs of the shower curtain as someone shoves it open. 

Feet in, then feet out. There are mud stains on the carpet. He wonders, belatedly, if that alone is enough to announce their presence: just the fresh mud from their shoes. 

Rick turns his head, slowly, and meets Negan’s hazel eyes at an incredibly close range. Sees, reflected in them, some part of his own fear. His fingers have cramped, by this time, around the crowbar he’s got clutched in one fist. Negan’s breath is hot on his face. 

They hear the front door swing shut. 

As soon as they’re gone, Negan speaks: “They’ll go to the next house over,” he hisses. “Keep lookin’. We gotta get out of here, _now_.” 

When they come to the doorway, Negan stops. “Stay at my back,” he says. For a man with a half-finished set of sutures in his arm, and a needle dangling from his flesh, it seems to Rick that he comes dangerously close to a smile, all teeth. “I’m gonna cut these fuckers brake lines. Then we can blow this popsicle stand.”

Rick pulls his gun from his holster. “Go. I got your back.” 

\-- 

Extraordinarily, beyond a few shots fired at them as they depart, it works.

There’s a trio of motorcycles, parked at the perimeter of the cluster of houses, and Negan slashes them up like he knows exactly what he’s doing, and then they’re gone. The truck rattles as Rick pushes it past 70 on the dirt-paved road. 

“You done that before?” Rick asks at length. 

“What? Cut a couple brake lines because some big-headed fuck with a Harley pissed me off? Hell yeah, I have. What kinda guy do you think I am?” 

He doesn’t know what to say to that, quite, but against all facets of his nature, the whole experience is prompting him to feel a rush of warmth toward the man who’s sitting in his passenger seat. Negan’s holding his arm together with one hand where Rick failed to finish up the stitches. Rick does his best to keep his eyes on the road. 

“I guess I don’t really know, do I?” he says eventually, and half to himself. 

How could he know, when all he’s done this past month is focus his energy on getting Negan firmly under his boot? He doesn’t know where Negan comes from. Doesn’t know where he lived before, or what he did for a living. Doesn’t even know if he has any family. 

The silence that follows is broken by the sound of Negan, scuffling as he’s getting something open, and the crackling of a lighter being struck. Rick’s driving fast enough he can barely afford to take his eyes from the road to spare Negan the glance he does. Negan’s got a pack of cigarettes, one wedged firmly between his teeth. 

“Crack the window,” he says around the cigarette. “You smoke, Grimes?” 

He rolls down the window. “No, not… not in a long time.” 

“Nicked these on the way out.” A few moments later, the interior of the truck starts to smell of cigarette smoke, and Negan coughs. “Hell, I ain’t smoked in a while myself.” 

When Rick glances Negan’s way again, Negan waggles the cigarette he’s lit at Rick suggestively between drags. “Come on, cowboy. Only so many of these things left in the world, these days. I’m fucking shook up, and I know you are too. Don’t make me offer twice.” 

After a moment’s pause, Rick steadies the wheel with one hand. He lets Negan slip the cigarette between his fingers. 

The combination of the smell of smoke, and the feeling of the paper between his fingertips throws him back, for a moment, to ten years prior, when Lori would smoke off the back porch of their house in the summertime. He would come and join her, always and inevitably, unable to watch her standing outside alone regardless of the situation. He’d thought of it as a dirty habit, at the time, but never turned down a smoke if Lori was the one offering him her cigarette, often freshly-stained with her lipstick. 

Even now, that memory aches. 

He remembers the sound of his neighbors, playing their stereo off the back porch, half-audible across the way and drifting into their backyard. He remembers the smell of freshly-cut grass after he’d mowed the lawn. He remembers eating breakfast cereal as a snack at 9pm, and Carl out of school for the summer and playing video games in the basement. 

He smokes, and rolls down the windows a crack, the hot air whipping into the car. He hears Negan lighting another cigarette a moment later. 

He wants to stare at Negan in a way he can’t, as they hurtle down the road at speeds the RV isn’t really meant for. He wants to stare him down like if he looks at every out-of-place hair on Negan’s head individually, and scours his face for every one of the fine wrinkles and patches of white stubble that put him on the wrong side of forty (maybe fifty), he might put together for himself some coherent picture of the other man. 

He doesn’t know why he bothers. He knows already what expression he would find on Negan’s face, if he took his eyes from the road to look again: one of complete inscrutability.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back on the horse that threw me, finally. my finals are over, and i have almost finished writing this fic! (although i have a couple more updates to go)
> 
> thank you all for bearing with me <3


	7. Fever Rest

_You gonna go home, and rub one out, thinkin’ about holding me down while you do it?_

Once Negan is safely back at the warehouse, Rick drives maybe halfway back to Terminus before he has to stop, has to be _alone_ in a way he never is among his own people. 

There’s a horrible picture that’s been coming together in his head, these past few hours. A horrible picture of _himself_. It’s a version of himself he’s never fully actualized before, yet which seems to exist fully-formed in the minds of those around him. He sees himself, how he must have looked after he killed Dwight and went to find Carl: drenched in blood, crying frantically, hatchet still clutched in one hand. He sees himself, how he must have looked, standing before his people still covered in Gareth’s blood and declaring that they would go _back_ to Terminus. 

That is: some horrifying monster. Surely much more real than Negan’s people, then just the faceless people who had slipped into their home by night in the hope of finding food. 

_That_ guy? Apparently, it seemed entirely plausible that he’d drag Negan off to the woods and fucking rape him. And, apparently, it still seems entirely plausible to Negan that he’s one weak moment away from deciding to just _take_ from Negan what he wants. 

 

He doesn’t think Negan noticed, or cared, that guilt caught up with him: the meds that Negan brought back for his community are all returned to his backpack. Rick, against his better judgment, won’t be taking any of them back home. Although after today, he figures he might be wishing he’d slipped a few sleeping pills away for himself. 

Because… well, that’s the worst part. Negan’s not completely wrong about him. 

Rick can’t keep his eyes from Negan when they’re together. Can’t stop _thinking_ about Negan, and what Negan thinks of him when they’re apart. It’s eating at him, day in and day out. 

And now, today is going to be eating at him too. He’s gonna be thinking about how hot Negan’s body felt under his, after they’d fought. He hadn’t been trying to hurt Negan, and even if maybe he can chalk it up to sheer exhaustion, Negan did him no real physical damage outside of his vanity (a bruised cheek). It had felt like… something else. Like something it had no damn right to feel like, and apparently, Negan had been able to read that tension right off him in an instant. 

Rick hasn’t _wanted_ like this someone since Lori. Couldn’t even consider it. In Terminus, he sleeps alone, on the couch of a little two-room complex he’s carved out for himself and the kids. He sleeps alone and faces the door, his weapons never more than an arm’s reach away. That’s been all he can think about, for months. 

With Negan and his people around, that should be even more his focus -- not to mention the other unknown group, roaming around their territory at will. But instead, he’s been lying awake at night not fearing for their safety, but wondering what it would be like if he hadn’t met Negan under these circumstances. If everything, somehow, had been different. 

After today, all those feelings? They all feel so wrong it makes him sick to his stomach 

Maybe Negan’s right about him. He forces himself to entertain the thought: that, give it a few more seconds, he’d have been just as happy to hold Negan down in the mud and have his way with him because deep fucking down, _that’s_ all he really wants. 

But it’s not. It’s truly not. 

That’s not in his nature, and even if the truth of his own nature is darker than he ever previously suspected, that level of violation is still not in the cards. Rather, more than anything, he finds himself wanting to go back to driving the RV, with Negan in the passenger seat. With the sun setting behind them, both heady with nicotine and the smoke hanging in the air, and Negan’s fingers brushing against his as he handed him another cigarette. 

He wishes he knew what was going through Negan’s mind that day. 

\-- 

Frankie’s bedside manner is… lacking today. 

“They’re not all bad you know,” Frankie says, seconds before she splashes alcohol into the gash on Negan’s arm. “Even Rick. I think he wants you to like him.” 

Pain breaks out across Negan’s arm like a host of ant bites, and he hears as his breath hisses in pain. “Coulda fooled me,” he grunts acridly. “Seems to me like the motherfucker is trying to get me to hate him, best I can tell. Some real _‘open wide and swallow my fat fucking dick’_ kinda bullshit for a charm offensive.” 

Frankie shrugs. “He’s been spending a lot of time with you. Asked about you last time he was here.” 

That’s because last time Rick was here, Negan couldn’t bring himself to show his face. He’s not looking so good, these days. Been running a low-grade fever all week long. 

As he sits there still, Frankie pokes and prods at the edges of the gash. He knows that she’s helping, trying to work off the crusty edges of puss and the dried up blood out of the irritated wound, but right now all he can focus on is how bad it hurts, and how her movements are painfully clinical. Right now, all he can think about is how he misses the way she used to sleep in his bed every night. Now, it’s been too hot for them to sleep together much and (if he had to guess), she’s been so busy pining over Rick’s pet samurai to even miss it all that much. 

It’s been almost a week since Rick took him back to the compound, and since then it’s been all silence from the surrounding area. Hardly a stray walker, or the rustling of a squirrel. 

Silence like this ignites a kind of crawling anxiety in Negan, knowing someone’s out there, and knowing that he and his own are ill-equipped to deal with any kind of conflict. Weeks ago, he’d stood by while Rick rifled through the whole of their armory ( _“You’re gotta pay us with something, right?”_ Rick had said, infuriatingly cheerful. _“We’ll be here for if you ever need anything.”_ ). 

He’s taken to sitting up in the upper level of the warehouse, peering out through one of the busted-out windows, looking for columns of smoke on the horizon. 

He’s thankful that guilt got the better of Rick, and he returned those fucking pills. They’re the only reason he sleeps at night, at all. 

\--

Negan’s arm isn’t getting any better. 

A week later, it’s still red and swollen. Rick’s people come and go, with their fearless leader nowhere to be seen, and the temperatures outside soar into the hundreds by the early afternoon every single day. 

Negan attributes his own bleariness to the heat, and Frankie worriedly smears down the gash on his arm nightly with years-expired antibiotic ointment. She mixes powdered Gatorade (courtesy of Rick) for the oldest and the youngest of their group and doles it out mid-day. She tries to get him to drink some, too, but he won’t. 

She takes to sleeping next to him again, but he thinks that’s just out of fear he’ll croak in the night, and _someone_ will need to be around to put him down. 

Sherry yells at him at least once a day to let her take him to Rick’s people for antibiotics and real medical care, but honestly? Negan thinks he’d rather just bite it. 

And besides, he’s _fine_. He still has about a dozen cigarettes in that pack he stole left to smoke. He sleeps through the hottest part of the day, and sometimes even the majority of the day. Sure, he’s been exhausted ever since he started the Saviors, but now it feels like something different, something he can’t really articulate or understand. 

\--

When Frankie wakes up in the middle of the night because he’s so _hot_ , lying next to her and burning up with fever, if or if not they’re driving him the hour to Terminus stops being a discussion, and becomes Frankie and Sherry dragging his entirely noncompliant, feverish ass down to the garage, and laying him out in the back seat of one of their trucks. 

As it happens, he doesn’t really have the presence of mind to protest. He knows he doesn’t want to go, but doesn’t really know why, anymore. He’s not sure what time it is, and by the time they’re rumbling down the road in one of the trucks, he isn’t really sure _who_ he is or _where_ he is, or why, as the darkness rushes past him as Sherry drives, there are so many people about, just standing and swaying by the sides of the road, or shambling after the truck. He doesn’t quite know why they don’t look like people, quite. 

He asks for Lucille, over and over. His goddamn _wife_. She should be here. But his requests seem to fall on deaf ears. Frankie and Sherry won't even look at him. 

The stitches Rick gave him swollen in a way which has nothing to do with their amateur nature. He’s not wearing his jacket, and as they rumble down the road, he raises his cut arm over his head, staring at it with something like bemusement. It’s alarming, really, the redness of the tissue expanding well beyond the original wound and spreading into his arm. Angry red stripes like cat scratch crawling on his skin, seeming to move under his gaze. 

He doesn’t know if this is what living feels like, or what dying feels like. 

\-- 

At Terminus, a man with a long gray beard is tending to him. 

“If you’re God,” he says deliriously. “I have some words for you.” 

The man laughs at him. Negan hasn’t seem a living human being as old as him in a long time. Hasn’t slept on sheets that are this white and this clean in a long time. He’s not quite sure if this is real, or the fever, or the fucking afterlife. 

\-- 

The next time Negan is conscious, Rick is sitting by his bedside. 

Rick must not see the moment Negan pries his eyes open. The other man is bent over a book, so still and silent that if it wasn’t for the methodical turning of pages, Negan would have thought that he was sleeping. Rick’s not looking at Negan, and the sparse little room where he’s laid up is only half-lit, although Negan wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was dawn or dusk. 

Negan’s head hurts like someone took his brain out and used it for kickball while he was sleeping. His whole body feels stiff, and the back of his throat feels drier than any drought. Still, he’s willing to bet that all of that is just from being laid up for God-knows how many days. His head feels clear. He is, for the first time in as long as he can remember, not covered in sweat. 

Jesus Christ, he thinks this place might have fucking _air conditioning_. At the very least, there’s a massive box fan sitting by the open window, whirring furiously. 

He looks at Rick again, through half-open lids, waiting for the inevitable rush of fear, but it doesn’t come. Rick’s hair is tied in a ridiculous low ponytail, poorly-trimmed curls spilling out at the sides, and looks like no one has brushed it in days. His face is sporting an awkward week or two of untrimmed beard, and the peeling remnants of a sunburn. He looks tired, and beautiful, there in the half-light. 

There it is, again -- the nagging feeling, which just won’t quit. 

Negan’s no fool. He wasn’t born yesterday, and he’s felt this before. He looks at Rick’s scruffy beard, and the dark eyelashes which hide his downturned eyes, and with the last remnants of his delirium, he imagines an entirely different world. One where he never came barging through Rick’s front door, and where he never had to suffer the consequences of that decision. One where everything… was different. 

In his chest: an ache that just won’t quit. 

Negan lies still long enough, watching Rick’s hands gently turn the pages, that he sees as the room starts to get brighter. The sun is coming up. He starts to hear, over the hum of the fan, the erratic chirping of catbirds, and the scream of cicadas. 

Finally, with some trepidation, he tries his voice: “Rick?” Then, louder, by necessity, because his voice initially comes out about as loud as a mewling kitten: “Fuck,” he rasps. “Rick.” 

Rick starts, almost dropping his book. “Negan.” 

Negan isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say in this situation. He finds he’s all questions, defaulting to lines straight out of the daytime soaps: “How, uh, long have I been here?” 

“Two days. You’ve been... in and out.” 

Negan winces, at that. Fuck does that mean? He hopes he kept his big dumb fucking mouth closed. “Who was that old guy?” 

“Hershel. He’s our doctor. You’re goddamn lucky you’re alive right now, you know. Few more hours, and you’d be in septic shock.” 

That sounds way, way too close to completely fucking dead for Negan’s liking. “Well, uh… Let him know I said thanks. Ain’t seen a guy that old in, God, I don’t even know how long. Don’t tell him I said that.” 

Rick chuckles. There’s water, sitting across the room, and Rick brings it over to him while they speak. When Negan presses himself into a sitting position, he’s appalled at how weak his arms feel. He’s appalled at how, surely, he’s never been this thirsty in all of his life, but he’s not sure he trusts his stomach, even on water. 

Rick puts the glass is in his hands regardless. Shakily, he takes a drink, wondering if he now owes Rick his life. 

Not that Negan cares, but Rick, personally, looks a little overwhelmed. He scrubs his hands across his face, and says, “You gave us all a scare. Why the hell didn’t you come sooner?” 

Negan doesn’t have an answer for that Rick wants to hear, but maybe Rick can read it off him anyway: he’d rather risk his life than ask Rick for help. Rick grimaces, face puckering like he’s tasting something sour. 

“Is everyone alright?” Negan asks instead. “Is uh. Sherry here? Frankie?” 

“Sherry went back to keep an eye on everyone. She radioed this morning. Frankie’s with Michonne. Everything’s fine, Negan.” 

A pause, as relief washes over him. 

“Negan,” Rick says, then, words bleeding sincerity and the promise of something serious, “I’m --” 

Negan shakes his head. “Don’t,” he croaks out, and Rick stops as abruptly as he started. “I’m, ah, gonna get you some food,” Rick amends. 

\-- 

Once Negan’s starting to feel better -- really, as soon as he’s feeling well enough to stand, only on the evening of the second day he’s laid up in the infirmary -- he gets up and goes into the pocket of his leather jacket. It’s been left hanging over the back of the chair Rick was sitting in when he woke up. 

He’s relieved to find the pack of cigarettes still in his pocket. He still has three left, and _Jesus Christ_ does he deserve them. After poking around for a bit looking for someplace even marginally quiet, he hobbles up to the roof to smoke. 

The sun is setting over the Georgia woods, and it’s a beautiful sunset tonight. Low clouds turn a clear yellow, and the concrete of the roof doesn’t look so ugly when it’s bathed in gold. He lights up his cigarette and breathes in deep. _Still breathing, huh?_ he thinks to himself. _Would ‘ya look at that? Who’d have thought?_

It figures he only gets about five minutes of peace before Rick finds him there: he brushed past Maggie in the hallway, who gave him one _hell_ of a look. Probably the next place she went was to tell Rick what he was up to. He’s barely had enough time to catch his breath from coming up the stairs before he hears the utility door swing open again. 

Negan looks at him sharply, awaiting reprimand, but Rick waves him off. “Nah, it’s okay, I get it. I hate the infirmary, too. Been in there too many times. Too many bad times. Fresh air will do you good, anyhow.” 

He turns to Rick in the dying light: “Well, then. Can’t have you bumming my cigarettes. There’s only so many of these things left in the world, you know.” 

This makes Rick grin. “ _That_ won’t do you any good,” he says, but it’s all talk: the other man produces a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and holds it out to Negan like a peace offering. 

They’re generics, but still: shit’s better than gold. “Ho-ly shit, Rick. Look at that.” 

Rick shrugs. “More where that came from. Daryl found a whole carton last week.” As he’s giving the smokes to Negan, he adds: “You shouldn’t smoke, you know.” 

“What? Like I’m gonna live long enough to get lung cancer?” He chuckles at that. “Trust me, the apocalypse cut down on my smoking something _considerable_.” There’s a guilty look, in Rick’s eye, a real cat-that-art-the-canary look that makes him laugh more. “Come on. Sure you don’t want to join me? Ain’t either of us gonna see the better side of sixty.” 

Rick leans on the railing next to Negan, and sighs. Fumbles around in his pocket, and comes back with his own cigarettes. “You got me, I guess you might be right. See that smoke on the horizon?” 

Couldn’t miss it. The white-gray of campfire smoke is hard to overlook. Rick nods. “That’s those fuckers with the dog. Once you’re well enough, I want you to come out and try to take care of them with me. Already dragged Carol out with me one time too many. ” 

Negan narrows his eyes. “Are you askin’ me, or are you tellin' me?” 

“Asking. You don’t wanna come, I won’t make you. And if you do, it’s as my equal.” 

Negan doesn’t answer right away. He waits until Rick’s finished, and the stub of his own smoke is burned down to nothing and feels the weakness in his own limbs. Maybe in another world, _a world without Rick_ , he’d be weak with something else. Weak with hunger. 

Maybe in a world without Rick, his backcountry scavenging mission gone bad would have left him dead by blood poisoning. 

“I’ll do it. You want me to kill for you? I’ll do it.” 

There’s a long silence which follows this admission, and when Negan looks over to Rick, Rick is already looking at him, his face drawn. “Negan, I -- I wish we had met under different circumstances,” Rick says at last, as he grinds the butt of his cigarette out under his heel. 

He sounds almost… tender. 

The light is fading. Rick goes inside, and leaves Negan watching as the smoke on the horizon disappears into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i bet yall thought i was NEVER gonna update again 
> 
> i also never thought i was gonna finish this one, but i've got the last planned chapter all written up, and should have it posted in a week or so :) 
> 
> <3 this chapter contains a very small 'fuck u' to canon, and there's a bigger 'fuck u' in my heart <3


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